The Poet and the Muse
by phantomwriter05
Summary: The mysterious death of an ally in the present is just the beginning of a larger revenge filled conspiracy to destroy the Connor family. Meanwhile two star-crossed lovers try to hide their secret relationship from suspicious eyes all around them. Sequel to "The Hanging Tree".
1. Chapter 1

**Introduction**

_Merlin's Time_

There's a place downtown where the sound of back-breaking work and machinery roll on and on into the night. Bulldozers, picks, jack hammers, and drills, all hammering paths, flipping cement, and cutting aged metal. They're all sweaty and dirty men and women pushing through the ruins of eroded rebar and the corroded cinderblocks of a civilization that was wiped from the face of the earth long before they ever drew breath. Underneath this cemetery of powdered bones and brittle glass they find the strange and the unknown of a world they knew nothing about, and some they've only heard of. Corpses made of cybernetics, their inner workings dust contaminated, their metal bodies crumbling to rusty mounds when touched. They were all that remained of a war that their parents fought. That their grandparents started when this thing they call "A City" was once a living and breathing organism that housed, fed, and carried the desires and dreams of the people who called it home. The workers, the flesh and blood of the operation are all the amalgamation of the hopes and dreams of two generations. The deaths and sacrifices of all the yesterdays before were now resting squarely on their shoulders. But for now, they pick and strike at the remnants of the old world, clearing it all away to forge a path to a promise land that has no name, that is somewhere out there on the horizon of the many coming days.

But underneath progress there's a place that few know about, and yet it might have been the most important location in the entirety of the human race, once. It's easy to find, easy to miss, and all of the roads lead to it. Somewhere in the labyrinth of toppled concrete and forgotten deco towers are commuter rails that run through the decomposed and rotted muscle and tissue of this destroyed metropolis. From the bare mountain silhouettes against the full silvery moon that illuminated a tarnished and wrecked sign that only says HOLLY, down to the inky black ocean that spilled over sea wall and barricade submerging with violent waves many a high end store and vacation home along the coast. Yet no matter where you are amongst this ruined and terrible nightmare, the yellow brick road is paved with iron and spike toward the Emerald City …. Or what it had used to be.

Union Station sat at the heart of this ruined body. She was an old starlet on life support, barely conscious while her doctors discuss when it would be time to pull the plug. Cobwebs, decay, and rust covered the once busy railway station. The Spanish architecture stained in scorch marks, while the red tiled roof lost shingles every day in age and disuse. Large buildings around it collapsed and spilled the shelled remains of the commuter engines; their bodies crushed under fallen cinder block of a once so distinct skyline. Inside, its marble halls were covered in pressure fractures; spider webbing fissures running across the grand ceiling. While on the floor, decades worth of dust and soot covered fallen crystal chandeliers that had crashed on top of gashed leather seats and smashed ticket counters. The old clocks on the ramshackled walls were all frozen. Their hands will forever mark the time in every hemisphere when the world had ended.

It's not on the surface were you find this place, but below. It's behind the depression-era maintenance hatch. Down the ladder and into the old sewers where the trolley lines reside forgotten. There, follow the strings of light bulbs hung on the old electric cables. In the center of the old lines, a desk sits in the middle. A film of dusty pages, yellowed with age, will make out a roster book that lays untouched. Inside are the names and positions of men and women that a malicious artificial mind would've killed anyone it had to gain possession of. Next to the desk sits a guard station where rusty latches for dog collars still hung on by a thread.

You'll hear it from the distance. It's all the way down the tunnel. The place where stained and thread bare blankets, rodent bones, abandoned rifles, hollow machine skulls turned spider nests, and smote fire pits line the walls and corridors for miles. It had been a place long sought after by many enemies during the last Great War, and many more innocent souls looking for shelter. This place had many names in the old days. But most notably amongst them was "Home Plate." It was a haunt of a man whose name still resonates even in these days — though some have claimed he never existed at all. It seemed hard to believe, but there was a time not so long that these tunnels had been the hub of all humanity. From here all you need to do is follow the blues, the rock, and the jazz to the source and you'll find it. You'll find them.

If you get here just before nine, you can find a spot in the briefing room. Any later and you could be standing all night. No one knows exactly where they get the food or the worst tasting alcohol in the west, but they have it. Night after night the regular crowd trudges in. No one was under the age of thirty. It's not that they mind. It's just no one even remembers where this place is. Because no star eyed youth alive remembers how it used to be. When this place used to be something, mean something.

If you pull up a seat you can listen to them talk. A pretty gal in her golden years will serve you a drink. She used to be something back in the day. She says a doctor most nights, but shaking hands changed all that. If you give her enough, she'll tell you about a woman, and a cyborg out of time, that saved her family's life. How a man from the future delivered her daughter, sometimes it's her sister. Daughter, sister, it doesn't matter to this pretty old dame, because she loved her about the same. You can ask her about the girl, she'll smile and tell you that if she was still around, she wouldn't be here serving drinks. It might make you question her sanity, if she had seen too much and drank a little more. But no one at the bar ever questions her, ever thinks anything else about her story but truth. That's when you realize that all of them, every man and woman in this room had seen things. They had seen the terrible, the impossible, the great, and the inconceivable.

It's the same inside jokes they've traded a hundred times. The same tales of adventure through machine infested oceans. Stories of a traitorous Maharajah's endless jeweled fortune found underneath his ancient fortress were he jealously kept the last nuclear warhead from the savior of humanity. It's one right after the other— amazing stories, unbelievable tales of the impossible. Yet, they all seem undaunted. With each story they tell here every night, like clockwork, no one bats an eye. It's the 'been there done that' routine as always. For all the regulars here had walked amongst the myths and Legends of a period of time quickly falling from truth to mythology in the world above them.

They spend the balance of the evening, telling the old stories. Before long, they slip into reminiscing about the key players in them. They talk about two brothers —war heroes— both disappearing one day never to be seen from again. They talk about the oldest one reappearing to deliver a baby many years in the past … a daughter or a sister, she can't remember. There are always heated words over a certain unique cyborg. She was a mechanical creature of an unparalleled beauty that had once been the scorn of humanity, the enemy's greatest asset, and their only ally in the final days of the war. They argue over conspiracies, and the rumors of a great and forbidden romance between the cyborg and the greatest of the legendary heroes. Some say this cybernetic princess died with her godlike father on that last day. Others say she's still out there somewhere, looking to reap her vengeance upon them all. But those who knew best carried an unlikely fantasy that she and the greatest of heroes, had escaped the ruin of a gothic castle to live somewhere beautiful and solitary so they might die together as it should be.

The merits of this argument over this messiah's secret romance with a machine always come down to his upbringing, and the woman who did it all by herself. They had known the man personally, and each had a different perspective of him. They doubted and teased, told humorous and heroic stories of him over the years. He had truly been the best out of all of them. But when it came to his mother, the woman who sacrificed her son to all of humanity, so he might save them … there were no jokes to be found. They spoke of her with respect, with care, and with a reverence found only in a devote Catholic's home. Only one of them had ever met her, and when she tells the story every night they all hang on every word she says. All of them forever enamored with "The mother of the future" and her endless sacrifice for them all.

But eventually there is an awkward pause from all of them. It's uncomfortable, and you might never know why. All of these stories, all of these myths and legends from a life and times that seemed hardly imaginable … yet, there is only one they don't talk about. They don't talk about the last of that venerable family of legends and gods. They don't talk about the impossible child, the Detective.

He had been one of them. But unlike the rest who had retired to relive, in a bottle, all that had been and never will be again underground. He could not let go. He's a vigilante – vicious and uncompromising. Above they fear and hate him, afraid of what he plans to do. His attacks on classified scientific bunkers and thefts of a malicious cybernetic god's research on time displacement had made all of the old veteran's targets of fear and suspicion. Above they'd rather believe that all that had happened in the war were just fantastic stories told by old timers, rather than to think how easily it could happen again. He's the last man standing, a fallen hero, spurred by the loss of a family he'd buried with his own hands. Forever convinced he could stop the war, determined beyond any reason that he had to stop it at any cost. It seemed impossible …

But so had been his creation.

They don't talk about him, though not out of spite or hatred. They don't talk about him, because they don't want to talk about the possibility. There wasn't enough hope in this collection of broken and hardened hearts to think about the success of this impossible plan. They feared as much as everyone above that just one tweak to the timeline, and they'd all be waking up one night to find themselves the last of humanity in the concentration camps of victorious machines. But they alone fear as much as they long for just one chance for a moment when all of this suffering and death was nothing but a bad dream. To wake up in their soft warm beds next to loved ones who had been lost for so long now they can't even remember their names. But whether it was fear or longing, it all was just too much to handle for those who had been through all the sorrows of this ruined world.

They don't think of such things anymore. All of them had done their jobs, done all the fighting and dying up there, so that they could live the rest of their lives down here where they had been reborn from hell's fires above. Now every night they come, sit, and talk of the past over a drink. Eventually in time, one by one, they'll stop coming, and only the rest will know why. But they'll come all the same, till there isn't anyone left …

There's a place downtown where the sound of back breaking work and machinery roll on and on into the night. And someday the jackhammers and drills will finish their jobs. On that day all that is left of the eroded ruins of this old world, and the last great war fought in its remains, will be nothing but sediment under foot of some new civilization. They'll create new life and lore bequeathed to them through the blood and suffering of all those that came before. Never remembering, never knowing that once … long ago ...

Legends, myths, and heroes all had walked these ruined streets side by side.

* * *

><p><span><strong>Ozymandias<strong>

_IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,  
>Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws<br>The only shadow that the Desert knows:—  
>"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,<br>"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows  
>"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—<br>Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose  
>The site of this forgotten Babylon.<em>

_We wonder,—and some Hunter may express_  
><em>Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness<em>  
><em>Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,<em>  
><em>He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess<em>  
><em>What powerful but unrecorded race<em>  
><em>Once dwelt in that annihilated place<em>

**- Horace Smith**

* * *

><p><em>Acknowledgements to:<em>

_"Truth to Power" by Frank Miller_

_and_

_"Merlin's Time" by Al Stewart._


	2. Guide My Sword

_Some Years from Now_

There was a golden light that touched the colored leaves of autumn in the rich tapestry of browns, oranges, and yellows. The chilled wind selected the leaves on their branches snatching them away, like a choreographer counting off her dancers to join their brothers and sisters in the endless recital. Sometimes the graceful leaf found itself a solo act, twirling and tumbling while the rest applauded in the rustle of their instructor's encouragement. Sometimes it was a group effort, figure eights, and a twirling orbit as they spun on taking their moment in the sunshine doing all they could do, before finding their everlasting rest on the sod with the rest of their siblings. They would be mulched in time and together nourish their mother through the winter, only to return again in the spring. It was an endless cycle, and yet a performance for the ages.

In the rustle of the wind, another solitary leaf the color of amber fluttered from high above the old grandfather of a tree in the clearing of the woods. Gently and coyly it sauntered on the chill looking for a place to land. Big innocent green eyes blinked open just in time to see the crescendo of its tour-de-force. They followed its path as it looked to be coming closer, then arc backward as if to land far away, then return. There was a simple pleasure in the trajectory, a refreshing randomness of wonder in where it might land. A quiet chuckle met the answer, when the tiny dancer fell with a crinkle on the stubbled face of the toddler's slumbering recliner.

The boy had a mop of black curls poking under a dark blue beanie, and little field coat of a matching color. The tiny tot lay against the large frame of a tall and broad man, who was splayed out under the tree, snoozing heavily. He had a ruggedly handsome face of designer stubble and a head of messily styled dark locks. Between the handsome young man and the toddler there was something in their facial features that had a quality of similarities, that was no mistaking that they were of the same blood. Sitting up from his reclined position, the little boy wobbled to his feet. Breathing audibly and biting his lip, holding a hand down as he stood. Balance suspect, he toddled unevenly with silent crunches over the chilled turf till he stood over the sleeping man's covered face. With some effort the small boy squatted next to the man and a chubby hand cautiously reached for the stem of the four pointed leave. With a giggle the toddler tried to grip his leaf. His soft hands brushed ticklish facial hair while the man sniffed and wiggled his nose at the feather touches. Once safely in the boy's grip, he unceremoniously plopped back down on the grass next to the man's head.

The leaf was bigger than his hands, dry and crinkled, and yet it seemed to be the most amazing treasure in the sight of one so innocent to the world of wonders around him. He lifted it to his face and gently gummed it for its taste. He frowned and crinkled his nose in displeasure, smacking loudly with a snorted shake of his head. Figuring that it was not something you eat, he next placed it on his face, making little noises of curiosity as he watched the world with an auburn tint. Suddenly the wind captured his leaf out his ginger grip.

With a whine of protest he watched it carry away from him through a thicket of smaller trees. Never before had the boy been up and about on wobbly untested legs faster than he was now. He almost ran several times, falling to the floor more than once, only to get up and follow away from the blanketed picnic area anchored by a full wicker basket filled with dirty dishes. In the dozens of multicolored leaves around him, the toddler's extraordinary eye for detail even at a young age hadn't lost sight of his special leaf that twisted and teased the little child as it was swept further and further into the forest.

There was splotchy darkness on the sunlit forest floor while the red colored cleaves rustled overhead. Their thin and bent white trunks offsetting with the leaves making it seem in the shimmy and shakes as if the entire wood was aflame. Within this embrace of nature and endless wonder, the tiny tot continued his pursuit till the wind called off its taunting. The four pointed leaf finally found its rest nestled in the hollow of a thick tangle of roots. With an exhilarated chortle of zeal upon his charge, there was a happy bounce in the toddler's sprint. Never had there been a prouder capture in a hunt than when the boy had reclaimed his solitary leaf.

This time would be different as he hugged it to his chest. Gently he opened his Jacket and slipped it inside carefully. When he was sure that his friend was carefully secure he looked around at his situation. Big eyes began to glimmer with just a hint of fear, as tears began to well, as they came so easily to infants. In his pursuit of the leave he had seemed to have lost his way, surrounded by dark shadows and oddly shaped patterns of light that cut through the canopies above. He didn't know what to do or how to find his way back, and now ever so afraid of what the next minute would bring without his protector.

It was then that something would happen that he would never forget. A moment that most people have at some point or another, something important, something unique that even at such an early age one never forgets. For the boy it started simply with the change of the winds direction. It's odd warmth on the chilly autumn afternoon that directed his curls and made him cover his coat in protection of his treasure. Intuitively, he followed the direction that wind had blown him and saw a concentration of light in a clearing within the first section of the colored woods.

He would never forget the strange pull toward it, the feeling of familiarity and safety the closer he came to it. With a growing sense of unexplainable wonder he trekked across the cluttered floor with the crunch of leaves under tread. He paused at the tree line and observed a natural gully that led downward into a circler field of perfectly wild grass.

The clearing was surrounded by the trees that stood like a curious audience watching a stage on some grand theater. There, in the complete center of the field stood a beautiful girl. The teen had familiar long curls that ran down her back like a glossy rivers of chocolate. She wore simple white dress of linen and was covered by a leather motorcycle jacket that was audaciously colored in purple. She stood motionless as if a statue, though he could see that she saw everything. Her golden orbs followed patterns of leaves, as her hand stretched out to feel the direction of the chill between her fingers. The toddler found himself entranced by this dreamlike state and curiosity of what she was doing. He crouched behind a root and watched her.

It seemed like hours that she did nothing but stretch her hands out to her sides and watch the leaves around her. What she was waiting for was anyone's guess, but it was the most curious thing the boy had ever seen … because, he never seen her do this before. But then he'd never forget what she did next.

Feeling the time was right, he watched the teenage beauty slip off her coat and gently place it on the ground with care. There was a mechanical grace to the way she moved, smooth and yet as if everything she did was choreographed, pre-conceived like a dancer. There was a disguising marker in her knee high black boots and matching belt that shined in the golden light as she removed them, setting them neatly next to her leather jacket. Finally, there she stood elegantly in her flawless posture. The wind captured her curtain of hair and white skirt, as she waited just a moment longer.

Then … she began to dance.

It didn't make sense, didn't have reason for why she did what she was doing. There was no music, no recognizable string of chorography in which she moved to, but to one in which the boy recognized. She moved and twirled as one of the autumn leaves that suddenly swirled around them. The wind whipped hard around the forest and hundreds of leaves of the likes the boy would never see again became air borne. They all shifted in perfect harmony with the wind, and twirled in time with the girl as if they had taken their lead from her.

A look of pure otherworldly wonder crossed his tiny features as he looked all around him, a gentle smile touching the boy's lips as he watched the leaves of the forest all flutter and twirl as if being conducted to the same invisible, unheard music that directed the girl's movements. If this was what she had been waiting for, calculating, then it must have been some divine chance that had led him here to witness this incredible indescribable scene.

But there was none that would say that it was chance that led the young man leaning on the tree behind the toddler to her. The boy wasn't startled in his glance around to the sight of such life to find the slumbering man now awake, clad in his double breasted leather coat and old jeans. His arms were folded across his chest as he looked upon the girl as if there was nothing else in the world. His eyes glazed over a pleasant smile plastered across his face. He looked at her as if she was some god sent creature and he thanked him every day for her being where she was, where she always wanted to be … by his side. To see this dancer, to touch her, to kiss her, and to have the toddler at his feet, it was all an irreplaceable happiness that he thought he'd never find in his lifetime.

The boy looked back to the girl, then back to the young man who loved her. The toddler knew little of the world, and the complexities of emotions he had yet to comprehend or feel. But never had he seen the likes of what he felt when he saw the two of them together. The way he looked at her, was something different, something deeper than what some had ever known in a simple romance. To the young man she wasn't just his wife, his lover, his partner. She was more than what she appeared to be, had been made to be.

She was his life.

* * *

><p><span><strong>Prologue<strong>

_Guide My Sword_

With a startled shudder, emerald eyes blinked open. Suddenly a gothic mansion sitting in a dark neighborhood went away; the frightened face of a pretty little girl was replaced with the dark vinyl to the glove box. Lying across the front of a muscle car's cab was a little boy. The black leather seats were hot against his bare skin and the cotton of his thin, navy colored hooded sweat shirt. Wiping sweat on the pant legs of his jeans, the boy slid to a sitting position with a troubled look in his sad eyes. His hood was drawn over his head as he slept. He was still shaking, as was always the case when he dreamt of the girl who haunted his nights. She wasn't always a little girl, sometimes she was his mommy's … had been his mommy's age. Sometimes she was older than that. But she was always afraid, and _they_ always hurt her. His only consolation in the helpless compulsion to love and protect her was that she was nothing but a dream. It was the same strange nightmares that had been plaguing him since he could remember. But something told him that it was for the last time.

_Three years late__r _

_**Judgment Day **_

He sat in the passenger's seat of his father's car. Sliding his hand further into his sleeve, the boy began to wipe away the condensation on the window. He diligently rubbed away the moisture with several squeaks as he cleaned in a circle. When he was done he was treated to the view of the most idealistic sight of the tallest mountains the boy had ever seen. If he hadn't known better, in a passing fancy, in the dark they might have looked like massive, shadowed clouds. His father had told him once that if there was ever was a good place to hide, it would be the Pacific Northwest. He hadn't told him that lately. In fact, he hadn't said much of anything lately. The boy hadn't exactly said a lot of things either. It was hard living this way, trying to continue on when something was missing. It was like in school, reusing the old puzzles during rainy day recess and constructing the picture most of the way to only find that there was just one piece missing that ruined the picture of a clock tower. That was the way he felt, but it was more frustrating, and much sadder than a ruined puzzle picture.

He rubbed the sleep away with his sleeve and drew back his hood. A tumble of loose raven curls fell into his eyes when he freed his hair. He pushed back the moppy black hobbit curls and exited the car. It was a brisk and clear night that smelled of fresh air and Douglas Firs. Above, the stars were painted on the dark sky, and a milky layer of illumination touched just above the glowing snowcapped peaks of the majestic mountains on the dark horizons. All around the small boy there was a rustling ripple of the wind shimmying and crackling the vast forest land on either side, and far ahead of him. His breath was visible in the air and that made him smirk just a little. He liked the cold, it always reminded him of Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. When you're a child the most exciting time of the year was when it got cold. But after a moment standing in the clean air, the new smells filling his lungs, he thought better of just stepping out in his thin pullover. Folding his arms over his chest and reached back behind his seat where there were over a dozen duffle bags stuffed in each nook and cranny. Which was nothing compared to the arsenal they had in the trunk. He retrieved a black miniature field jacket that had been a replica of his father's. On the breast pocket was a little shiny pin with a golden "R" outlined in black on a red field. Even with his hoody on, the jacket was still a large fit. His parents always bought him clothing that were a size or two too big for him. He was just wondering at this stage if he was ever going to grow into them.

Closing the door behind him, he paced to the front of the car, his sneakers crunching on the asphalt. He was a little nervous, because even though there hadn't been a car this way since they got there, he was always afraid of standing on the road. His mommy stressed the statistics and likelihood of being hit by a car in Los Angeles, and the great expenditures and financial burden it would cost her to put on a funeral for him. This reminder every time he didn't want to hold her hand when crossing the street, trying to convince the golden eyed girl that he wanted to be a "big boy" had more than stayed with him. Her repetition in lecture in turn created an anxiety every time he approached asphalt without a slander hand to hold. But now safely back to the driver's side, the raven haired boy perched himself on the hood of his father's Mustang.

Curious eyes searched innocently through the long stretched tree line on both sides for any sign of his father. The man had told him that he was to stay put, guard the car, and not leave for anything. They had come all this way, and seemed strange of all the many miles they traveled it was just to meet _Catherine Weaver_. She didn't stay and barely spoke a word to his father. As for him she merely asked if he was okay. He nodded, and she picked him up, comforting him with a cold, awkward hug and a word of advice that "Children are nothing, if not resilient." She disappeared into the woods after that and it was the last they saw of her. He guessed he didn't blame her for leaving when she did, the boy's father was not happy to see her, and even less happy to see her holding him.

Passing the time, glassy orbs turned the roadside into deductive grids. There had been three vehicles in the area in the last week. The oldest was a big rig, hauling lumber. It pulled over to pick up a passenger. The footprints were made by size six lady hiking boots that were pacing, accumulating a collection of burned out cigarette butts in their wake. He figured that she was on a camping trip. Someone made her mad, someone she knew for a longtime and had a bad history with, which is why she was stress smoking. She must have been an attractive lady which is why the lumber man stopped to pick her up on her way back home to Seattle. The second car was an SUV, it arrived before he and his father. One person, size four heels, she was carrying something heavy which is why the imprints are more defined. This must have been Catherine, carrying whatever it was that his father wanted returned to him. The last vehicle was theirs. It was a 1973 Ford Mustang, black with chrome stripes. It had been bought when his parents were younger, which they rebuilt by hand, together. It was his Mom and Dad's first and only car. The rumble of the engine, the leathery smell of the seats, and the shine of the chrome on a sunny California morning were all as familiar to the young boy as one might recount a beloved childhood home. From the driver's side was an imprint of motorcycle boots, size thirteen. The man had big feet, the boy often wondered if he would ever be as big as his daddy.

Curiosity gripped the young soul as he followed his father's trail from the trunk of their car out into the woods. He had been specifically ordered not to leave the car, but it began to eat at him why he had been gone so long. The sun had been setting when he and Catherine had disappeared, but now it must be at least three or four in the morning. He slipped off the hood of the car and hesitantly began following the tracks. He paused at the tree line which swung and snapped at him in the wind. There was something scary about the way the trees looked in the dim moonlight, their branches like clawed fingers, and the miserable and fierce faces that were twisted by aged bark. Also, with what happened to the beautiful girl in his dreams still fresh in his mind, he hadn't forgotten _the basement_. There was something about the way the shadows were thrown by the silhouettes of the forest in the starlight that reminded him of the dark abyss filled with _classical music_ that echoed over the screams of the tormented "princess" in his Nightmares.

He could've turned away and would've only a week ago. But he remembered his failure that night, the night he lost … his …. He remembered the fear that stopped his retribution, that let _"The Woman"_ get away after what she had done. After that night, watching a two story house of brick overlooking the city scape, the only home he had ever known burn to the ground. The boy swore that he'd never let it happen again. He swore he'd never be afraid again. Never let fear stop him … _**never again**_. With a deep breath of cold, pine-scented air, he trudged forward into the wild.

All around, the sound of animals and nocturnal birds filled his ears. He knew the risk of what could happen if he lost his way. Even a couple of steps into the dark woods and he might have already been lost. He compensated for this by keeping his eyes downcast. Making sure he followed his father's tracks from the road all the way to where he was now. He paused one or twice, the rustle of the trees, the hooted owl call that sounded like his name. His response was to draw his hood up and continue to sneak forward, to always keep moving.

A woman had told that to him, "Always keep moving." She was someone very important once, though he had no recollection of her but for feelings that came residually. She had always been sad, forever trapped in the cellars of some deep unshakable sorrow. It always somehow made him love her more, hoping that his deep affection for her would help. But it would seem his young struggles all came in vain, for now she was all but a shadow in his mind. A lingering nostalgia for a beautiful faceless woman who left one day and never came back. Her leaving had left a wake of anger and sadness, but in time the abandonment led to a stronger and more dependent love between two people who now needed one another more than ever with a toddler to raise by themselves. In the time his mind had lingered on this mystery woman, the boy had come upon a tiny clearing within a thick tangle of white trunked pines.

Hours of hacking, clearing, and cutting with a grief fueled focus had cleaned away space for a constructed bed of white pine logs. In the sky a passing wisp of obscuring clouds pulled away like stage curtains on the final act of a Grimm's Fairytale. When the full moon's purifying, silver light broke, the film of frost forming on the rare trees surrounding the clearing began to glint and glimmer like the falling of mourning tears in the sight in front of them. A man knelt at the side of the pine bed, as a man of faith might at the altar of his savior. He was tall and broad in the youth of his early twenties, though sudden grief and sadness seemed to have aged him. His dark hair was disheveled, a streak of white marring it overnight. His bearded face lay pressed to a lifeless hand in his impossibly tight grip. He seemed to be heaving heavily, his other large hand gripping a silken material over a taut torso. Upon the bed was the lifeless body of a young girl that had barely seen her seventeenth birthday … or so it had seemed. Her beautiful face was muted to color and emotion. Despite her skin tone it seemed as if it had only been a few hours that she had been alive, for there seemed to be nothing visible to say what had killed this angel who had run aground. Her glossy chocolate hair tied in a bun seemed to contrast with the array of white around her, including the elegantly strapless wedding gown she wore.

It had been weeks, he wasn't sure how many, since the last time the boy had seen her. Though, he'd never forget the last time as long as he lived. She had been lying in the middle of the living room floor. He could remember the shine of her pink night slip reflecting off the blank television screen, and her eyes, golden and blank as they stared up at the ceiling. He had shaken her, tried to wake her up … but she didn't and she never had since. He remembered being so desperate and afraid that he shook her so hard that it turned her lifeless head. There, stained on the living room rug was a massive pool of blood from where the top right of her head was missing. All he could remember in that moment was wires, so many blood soaked wires spilling out of her head like the guts of a pumpkin that was being carved for Halloween. Sometime before their neighbor Kacy carried him away as his father torched their house, to the time the man had kicked open the front door with his gun drawn. The boy had come to the realization that his _mommy_ would never wake up. So he laid his head against her belly like he always did, knowing that it would be for the last time.

His father tiredly, weakly, pushed himself to his feet. He might not have ever gotten up again. He'd pick a spot next to his wife, his arms around her and let go of all the destiny and prophecy that had made him. Let some poor hiker find them the way they were meant to leave this world, together. It wasn't for responsibility, or destiny that kept the man from joining his wife, it was all for the boy watching from behind a tree. Shaky hands short on food and sleep in the past weeks quietly folded his wife's hands to her chest, his in between them. He struggled to say anything, his voice coming out in a sobbed chortle of a weakened voice, tear drops falling on the bare skin of her chest. When all the things he wanted to say didn't come, he bowed his head in defeat. In their last moments together the broken man summoned all of the years that had come and gone, all the blissful moments together, and all the hard times that had yet to stay when the nights were spent in the arms of a love tailor made by impossibility. He let all of it crowd around him, allowing it to fill everything that made this man. Then, for the last time, he leaned down and captured the lips of his first and only love. Passing through him to her was all the "could've been" and yesterday's when they might have loved and found peace in the seclusion of their many future years together. And when they broke apart he left all of it within her. Like the rite of a last blessing he filled the beautiful girl with every last joy that could be had in the young man's life yet to be lived. There it would stay, to be burned away to ash with their love. It was a promise, a vow never forgotten as long as he drew breath. And when his heart squeezes its last beats under some decaying ruins of a dead city or nightmarish battlefield of scorched skulls and ash it will be calling her name forever.

There was a pop and then a fizz that broke the mourning silence that had been cast over the woods. Emerald eyes squinted away from the brilliant flash of light that erupted from a tossed road flare that landed on the wooden death bed. The smell of Thermite overpowered the clean air as a blinding flash created strange strobing shadows against the tall soldier pines. Though the boy looked away, his father didn't. He watched the flames, heard their roar as they lit the night. In their dancing light, slowly, like a hole in a volume container, the humanity in the widower drained away in the light of his wife's pyre. He would no longer be the man that came to this place. The young boy watched as his father reached for something around his neck, its silver, untarnished body glinting in the violent light. Emotionlessly he ripped the chain from his neck and held it to his side. Slowly, as he became entranced by the flames, it fell little by little from his grip, till it thumped onto the ground.

When he could no longer stand it, the young man, tired and seemingly drained of all human feeling, turned. The boy moved quietly, hugging the pine tree he used as cover, shifting unseen away from the man as he watched him go. In his passing, the boy held his gaze toward where his father had disappeared till he knew he was gone. Carefully he emerged from his hiding spot and moved below toward the burning pyre where what was left of his mother melted away. Strange shadows, and patterns of light danced over a small hooded face. He couldn't see her within the angry flames and maybe that was a good thing, but then was it any better than the last time he saw her? Lying on the floor, murdered in cold blood?

The boy didn't stop till he reached the spot where his father had been standing. There was a sad curiosity to the small boy as he crouched down and picked up what his father had abandoned in the grass. It was his silver pocket watch on a matching chain. He knew it well, his daddy had never gone anywhere without it. His mommy had made it for him when they were young and his father had carried it like a totem wherever he went. Tiny little fingers grasped the ice cold pocket watch in a small fist.

He remembered the last time they had come here. It was a bit hazy, but he did remember the picnic. But if he could choose one memory that he might never lose it was the one that had been made here. He'd never forget the day his mommy had danced with the leaves. The tight spins of her white linen dress as the autumn surrounded her, twirling and floating in the chilled air like some great choreographed performance. Her long curls capturing the leaves as the wind sounded through the trees, dancing to nothing, to something that only she heard, that she knew. He guessed his father hadn't forgotten it either, that moment when she became something more in his eyes, something not special, but magical. That's why it had to be here, not just any place, but here. Her remains were to be carried amongst the branches and leaves, forever to dance like she had on that one perfect autumn day.

As if roused by the spirit within the smoking timber and metal, a strong wind came swirling from the west. A tide of loud rustling of branches swept all along the tree line of the clearing. It was applause of an adoring audience calling for an encore to the rising smoke that touched the outline of the full moon. A single tear fell freely from the little boys eyes at the sentimentality of the moment and all the little memories that broke his heart in sight of his mother's unmarked grave. All he could think as the red, orange, and yellow leaves of autumn came floating to the clearing once more, was how much he wanted her hugs, her tilted head, confused frowns, tightening cheeks … He wanted all of it.

The boy only wanted his mommy back.

A large hand reached out from behind him. The callous palm and cold fingers gripped the narrow shoulder of the small child. Tear stung eyes turned to meet the man that he knew was waiting. His matching green eyes were tired and worn beyond their years. He had a stubbled beard and his hair seemed disheveled. The grief and madness within reflected in the rugged appearance. But even when lost in the blackness of his worst fears, there was a dignity and strength within the man that he cursed. For it was a strength that helped him carry on one day at a time, living robbed of a family that once surrounded him and a love that completed him.

For a long moment the small boy thought that coming here, seeing this, exactly what his father didn't want him too, would land him in trouble. He was ready for the passionate snatch of the scruff of his neck, the angry command for the boy to look the man, the hard lecture of what he did wrong. Though there were many of passionate lectures to come over the years, it would not happen this night. The tall man instead knelt in front of his child, coming to eye level with glassy eyes. He saw the sadness within his father, as he felt it inside himself. He looked down at the trinket in his hand. Opening his small fist he held the pocket watch to the shell of a man. It had been his prized possession, one of the only items made by his wife on the earth. To the boy it was too precious to be left forever on the floor of some forgotten forest.

The man reached for the watch, but halted. His hand shook the closer he came to touching the item, but he never did lay his hand on it. Instead he placed the outstretched hand back against his forehead and closed his eyes. The man feared that even the brush of skin on the cold metal would unleash all the crippling emotions that he had buried and burned away with his wife's body. He gave a deep shaky breath before he opened his eyes again. For a long meaningful moment they rested on his son offering. But instead of taking the item, the man reached out, his hands pushing back the boy's hood, freeing his grown black curls. Retrieving the watch from his boy's hand finally, he took the chain and clasped it together again. But instead of his own, he looped the silver watch around the boy's tiny neck, letting it lay against the child's breast. A tiny hand reached up and clasped it again, looking down at his inherited watch one more time.

There were no words then, no proclamations. The man in Sarah Connor's double breasted mahogany coat simply held out a hand toward the boy. Little green eyes looked from the outstretched hand to the watch, then back. The watch was part of an agreement, a promise the he would never again part from it, to wear it in remembrance of a shared wound that would never heal. Determined green orbs of a raven haired child took all he could of the large hand, giving it a shake.

As a father hoisted his child up into his arms, walking away from the last of their old life, the solemn night sky above was suddenly filled with motion. The sullen quiet of the forest was broken by the rumbling noise of jet fuel and smoke trails. Great shadows darkening the tall tops of trees, shaking the ground in their passing as the silhouettes of giant rockets emblazoned with Russian symbols crossed in front of the silvery full moon above. For miles and miles the roar of mighty explosions could be heard from the other side of the echoing peaks beyond as the sky glowed with fire and death.

That terrible night father and son made a silent vow like a knight and squire of old. The flaming pyre that consumed the one they loved the most was their altar, the ash their anointment oil, and the smoke their holy incense. They alone, the last of a family, of a legacy, would continue on till this grievous atrocity had been avenged. They would fight till all of humanity was saved from the terror that was created in the name of peace between human and machine. Together or alone they would never give up, never let go, until the endless paradox of death, destruction, and loss was finally ended once and for all.

* * *

><p>"<em>Father, I have failed you for these last twenty years. Now our misery can end. But I need you. I need you, please, father … <em>_**Guide my sword**__."_

**-Inigo Montoya **_(The Princess Bride)_

* * *

><p><strong><em>Acknowledgements<em>****_ to:_**

_"Guide my Sword By Mark Knopfler"_


	3. Chapter One: The Woman

_**San Francisco **_

_**1975**_

_There was a cool breeze that caressed and stewarded the masses of people that wandered through the neon lights that shaded the sidewalks of the city by the bay. It was more than just a pleasant night. It was the kind of night that you opened your windows to, sat on the front porch and crack open your favorite book, call up your girl and ask her out to your favorite spot to propose marriage. The light kisses of the pleasant weather, the history of the old streets humming off the crowded sidewalks, and the shops advertising the same unique merchandise in the storefront windows. No one out in the heart of the city —the bay salt whipping through their hair, and the smell of traffic and Chinese food in the air— no one could deny that there was some sort of strange magic working its way through the town on this night. _

_The sounds of a city echoed through the starry and bustling atmosphere all around. The honking horns, the revving of engines, the thousand indistinct conversations, and the tingles and jingles from the store doors. All of it called to the normal Saturday evening that could be found in this part of town. The young exploring the shops, the old going about the evening schedules they have kept for decades when they had discovered the shops and eateries in their youth. Older men and women in their fedoras and pearls walking arm and arm, their love dimmer, but never to be parted as they passed the girls and young men looking through the windows and the glass counters at the jewels and real estate magazines. The promise and hope to a future beyond the poverty of youth sparkling in their eyes. Hand in hand, boy and girl make promises that may never be kept or remembered many years from now. But for tonight, those words would never be forgotten when so much life was ahead of them in the possibility of tomorrow._

_Yet no one on this perfect evening batted an eye to the rhythmic clacks of little shiny black shoes on the cracked pavement. A blur of long curls and pea coat sprang through crowds, splitting couples, and nimbly weaving around benches and public trashcans. Unconcerned eyes watched from sitting and static positions with mild amusement for only a moment before returning to their own business, as was the custom of any urban environment. Strobing bulbs of the theater marquees, and the active neon flashing above shadowed and colored the glistening tears on a young girl's milky cheeks. She bumped and shoved her away through the crowded sidewalks earning curses and snarls as she flew without abandon in a dead sprint. _

_No older than six years old, this living porcelain doll had long tresses of black curls in tight regal ringlets tied by a virginal, white bow on the top of her head. Her pale face shadowed in the alley she turned into. She was breathing heavily, fear gripping every fiber of her being as she desperately fled from it. Dirty water and slippery muck stained her shined shoes while splashing through the dark narrow space. From her right to left stacked crates of alcohol and other inventory sat in reserve from the bars and restaurants that lined the downtown miracle mile. Above she saw red lights sitting in the upper apartment windows and metal grated stairs leading up to the second stories. _

_The little girl had become so distracted by her new claustrophobic setting that she slipped in an open pothole lying in wait in the untended asphalt. She gave a cry of surprise as she spilled to the ground, the sound of expensive thread ripped to accompany the painful smack and scrape of the fall. Immediately the little black stockings had tears, and blood welled from the scrapes on her knees. A streak of dark brown slime slashed across the chest of a lacy white dress. Her face fell as she sat up straight and looked down at herself. She was filthy now, and she had ruined her dress. It was enough to make her cry. _

_The flicker of movement caught her eye from her left. Buried between two large stacks of crates were two shadows rustling and overlapping one another, oblivious to the girl's presence. A tan skinned woman of Asian descent leaned back against the cold of a brick wall. She was dressed in an opulent silken robe of bright red, a yellow and black dragon slithering around its waist. A bare breast with an ashy nipple peaked out from the open clothing as she lounged back, easy smoke rings spewing out of brightly colored lips. Pressing against her was the large frame of a black man. He wore a purple pinstripe suit, his shoes white and black. Leaning on a moderate stack of empty crates next to them was a bejeweled cane, and an audacious wide brimmed hat with a matching feather. The bald dark skinned man's close-cropped beard scratched at the nape of the Asian woman's neck. From his throat, hungry aggressive noises could be heard. They were emotions that didn't seem to be shared by the Asian woman who took another lazy draft of a cheap cigarette. Through the slow gathering clouds of smoke her golden eyes fell on the little girl still lying on the ground. She didn't speak, didn't draw attention to the sight of the young child dressed clearly for the wrong side of town. In the gathering haze of smoke that spewed like a chimney from her open mouth, the girl became frightened by the long blank stare. In the obscurity it looked as if her blank eyes were slowly becoming slit like a reptile. The emotionless woman's face began taking the same likeness to the dragon on her robe. Her eyes starting to glow a familiar … __**machine**__ like red. _

_But before the girl could look any deeper into the growing unnatural, something inside her belly turned. Over her fallen figure, a tall, shadowed silhouette was growing. Someone stood at the mouth of the alleyway. She couldn't make out anything distinctive about the presences except for the glint of the marquee lights on a pair of eyeglasses. She was suddenly filled with fear again, the same that had brought her to this point now. Instinctively she fumbled for the item next to her. It was a porcelain doll, dressed in high Victorian style, her face cracked, her tumbles of auburn hair caked with alley muck. She held her dolly to her chest and found her feet. A playful voice called to her mischievously, covering a deep-seated wrath underneath as it echoed through the narrow space. _

_The back alley led to a narrow path between rusted gates of small, low-rent, whitewashed houses. They were cheap, rotted homes built during the expansion years after World War II. In the subsequent era since the homes had become dilapidated, and fallen to disrepair. She sobbed as she continued on, her soles clacking away on the dusty concrete. She nearly fell again as a hound dog, all black with a cataract clouded right eye came racing up next to her. It met the rickety fence that separated them with an angry rustle. His barking was loud and aggressive, the demeanor not frightened or curious, but angry and dangerous as it snapped and snarled at the fleeing little girl._

_Emerging from the narrow passage between rundown houses, she appeared on a chalk white street. The noise and motion of the downtown area was snuffed by the suburban silence of the old neighborhood in which she had found herself. Behind her was a row of the old, decaying, ground level homes. But surprisingly, across the street was a section of old Victorian mansions that seemed at least ninety years old. Their exotic colors chipped and weathered with time; their appearance drawing direct lines to the early years of a city's history. They were certainly not the first homes built, but one might consider them the first true houses that brought a small port town into a larger world. In their heyday they might have been sparkling examples of a worldly city trading with the markets of Hong Kong and Sydney. But almost hundred years later, the homes seemed shambled and forgotten, only a block from modern life. Their lawns were overgrown, and weedy. Their cast iron bared fences off angled and rusted. It had been true that there was some strange magic working its way through the buildings tonight. It was like being drawn to a far-off light, your imagination teeming with possibility of what the brilliance might hold. But up close where the origin of this feeling was, the girl felt it twisting her insides, knowing that it was all coming from this place … and it was a fool's gold, for under its shiny exterior hid something black as night. _

_The same mischievous crooning voice carried on the wind to the little girl. From the exit of the alley a tall, lanky shadow in a knee length blazer, bowtie, and glasses stood under the spotlight of an ancient street lamp. There was something off kilter and malevolent in his amused grin as he spotted the girl standing alone in the middle of the street. The terror and dread of the sudden embodiment of every nightmare she had ever experienced ran through her. She could feel him hold her down, work his will through her, make her do things she never dreamt of doing … especially to the people she loved. She had this one moment to flee, but no matter how far she ran she couldn't escape him— his cold and angry voice whispering such horrible intentions as she drifted to sleep._

_Standing apart from all the houses in the neighborhood was one that didn't take on a Victorian architecture, but that of an old southern gothic mansion. It was a tall two story, made of chalk white stone. A matching stairway leading to the front doors was flanked by towering Roman columns on each side that held up the edge of the massive roof. Above the brittle, stained glass double-doors was a marble balcony on the second story that looked out over the large front of the home. Something about the grandeur and size of the manor reminded her of her own childhood home and drew the girl toward it. _

_An unearthly wind kicked up, swirling a collection of fallen autumn leaves of reds, oranges, and yellows all around her stained ankles, sticking to her stained skirt and coat. Gasping desperately, she leapt up two steps at a time toward the front of the mansion. Her breathing was ragged and cut short as she sprinted under the shadow of the balcony to enter the home. The combination of oak and custom stained glass made it nearly impossible for a girl so young to pull open the doors. But fear and adrenaline rushed through her system and her small victory was announced in the unoiled creek of the hinges as she squealed in the use of all her strength. Slipping through the crack, she immediately closed the door behind her with a clank. _

_She thought, at least for the time being, of having in her possession a moment of safety. She leaned against the heavy doors, her slender hand resting on her heaving chest, new tears staining her fair cheeks. But just as she tried to catch her breath, a horrible sinking from her chest into her belly came over her. She had thought that she was safe, but when the stale smell of neglect, and the taste of dust was in her mouth she knew she had made a terrible mistake. _

_The lobby of the mansion and the large expansive sitting room had no sundries, no rugs, or carpets, and no furniture. It was completely bare but for the hunter green, soot contaminated drapes that hung adjacent to the brittle windows. Stripped of everything but the thick wooden floor boards, sanded of its mahogany finish, the floor and walls were adorn with dungeon cuffs and dark age chains screwed to the foundations. The black haired girl began to hyperventilate at the sight of mounds and mounds of skeletons still in captivity. The blackened irons rusted by blood, still clamped to fractured wrists of intact skeletal remains lying on the floor, and propped against the walls. In her fear she had fled back to the place she didn't want to be, that she had tried to escape from time and time again. _

_With a gasp she began to run again. Away from the horrible sights that plagued her every night, always coming after her, in every happy memory of her childhood she tried to hide in. __**They always found her**__. The girl fled deeper into the mansion, away from the skeletons of a far flung future. She turned corners, her shadow leaping through gaps in the wooden beams of a torn out wall. Her little shoes thumping over dusty boards. She didn't stop till she reached a lone corridor, past a downstairs washing room. _

_She skidded to a halt at the opening to a room with a descending wooden staircase shaded in a pitch black abyss. The aged off-white door leaned open, the loose hinges made it wobble as limp as a drunk, banging back and forth against the wall. There was a dollhouse next to her—a replica of the home she was trapped in—sitting on corner table. She began to shudder violently at the sheer sight of the black blanket in front of her. The little girl would go anywhere; do anything, as long as she didn't have to go down there … anywhere but __**the basement**__. _

"_No!" _

_She heard the squeal of a door at the other end of the stairs. Then there were feet, just feet. They were slow taps like a heartbeat, like the rattling chains of a damned spirit in a Dickens novel. From down below they methodically made their way up toward her. Each placement echoed with a squeak of aged wood, each mounted step like a tormented cry for mercy. She would pray, beg, and hold tightly to whatever she could find. But cold, lustful hands would always take her in their grasp and carry her down into the dark depths to poison her with the relived memories that made her go away … helped something else, someone else take her place. _

_The girl had to get out of the house, had to get back to another yesterday in her mind. But when she turned, the way of escape was blocked. The tall stickily figure of her tormentor stood hunched, a fist grasped in his hand. He was a stately and intelligent looking man of high breeding and even higher education. His face was distinctive with a protruding chin and hollow features. His smirk was never predatory, never aggressive. It was a mild mannered gesture that exuded a primal sense of arrogance and progressive condescension of one who knew he was always the smartest man in the room. _

_He bowed in order to come eye level with the girl. "You ran again." He whispered gravely in an intellectually concise English accent. He nodded as his face took a mock seriousness in the furrowed brow. "What did I tell you about running?" The voice he chose to address the girl was like that of a chastising parent. _

_Filled with resentment toward the way she was being treated and the feeling of fear of being cornered, the girl lashed out. A glob of spit smacked the Englishmen's glared lens glasses. The primal aggression on the girl's face was not one that any at the age of six could know. That kind of anger and hatred was reserved for tired souls who knew years of pain and loss, who lived each moment in fear for many years. _

_There was no anger in the man's demeanor as he straightened his back. He smirked mildly at the girl's actions. He removed his glasses placing them in his breast pocket. "I told you, there's no use in disguising yourself." He suddenly kicked the girl in the gut with a polished business loafer. She let out a gasped growl at the explosion in her stomach. Knees buckled with a thump of hard wood, she cradled her stomach, drool leaking from the corner of her rosy lips. "No use in hiding …" He grabbed the pretty girl by the bow in her long ringlets and smashed her face first through a wooden beam. For a long moment she was planted to the boards before she finally slipped to the floor. Blood ran down her nose in rivers as she fell flat on her back. _

"_You belong to me now." His temperament never broke as he observed his handy work. _

_She spat blood out of her mouth like an experienced prize fighter, instead of an aristocratic tot. "I'll never belong to you." The proper English accent she had been speaking with went away, and another darker, older voice of an polished accent that covered the distinctness of the one she used to speak with in youth took its place. _

_There was amusement in the man's face at her response of defiance. He leaned down again. "If you wanted to fight, you should've chosen a different newer __**memory**__ to hide in." He removed his glasses again and from his breast pocket he removed a silky item to clean them with. "I did warn you …" he paused to look at the top of the dark basement steps. _

"_No … oh no, no, no, no!" _

_A figure appeared out of the darkness. She was a very stern older woman with hard wrinkles around the corners of her mouth and eyes. The wrinkles would have been more front and center had she not pulled her main of tangled silver hair back into a very constricting bun. Her looks suggested that she might have been a great beauty once, but now a lifetime of displeasure had drained all the light from her. "What have you done to yourself … oh my poor, poor, yummy girl." There was something maternally playful and cutesy about her usually refined and elegant voice as she made a perfect spectacle of the sight of the girl on the floor. _

"_No, no …no!" The girl cried at the first sight of the woman who had emerged. She was fell upon with a barrage of playful kisses all over her face, pressed down on the dusty floor by cold bony hands that found their way to her soft dress, caressing her stomach intimately. _

_The old woman only shushed the girl between wet stringy pecks. "Oh … look what you've done to this dress." She clicked her tongue at the girl in disappointment. "You're just so filthy, filthy, filthy!" Her hands began to slip the girls shoes from her feet and coat in succession. "You're such a dirty girl, my princess." She cooed with eyes that stood contrasted of the voice she used. The old woman's hands diligently unhooked and zipped the back of the lacy dress with an obsessive compulsion and uncaring manner for the girl's decency. "And what do we do with dirty girls?" She asked almost manically. _

"_Please, don't …" the girl with a woman's voice begged in a deep depression of a long lost part of an unhappy life of wealth, high society, and secrets locked in the darkness of lavished bedrooms. _

_Skeletal hands squeezed the girl's cheeks together almost viciously, clamping her mouth shut. "Hush!" The old woman snapped possessively. She was a woman who always got what she wanted, no matter the cost, and the girl, who she dotted and worshiped, was no different. When she had gotten the obedience she wanted, she proceeded by lifting the soiled dress over the girl's head, tossing it to the side. "Dirty girls need baths, Princess!" She announced with an inescapable darkness hidden underneath her loving voice, like a crocodile under a pond of lily flowers. Without missing a beat she scooped the girl up in her bony arms and turned on a heel toward the pitch black. _

"_No! Not down there! NO!" A now lean figure of a grown woman, disguise shed, struggled fruitlessly as the crone descended the steps with her helpless prize. The woman's terrified and desperate protests echoing off the walls were deluded with the drifting notes of a __**classical piano**__ from the abyss below. Suddenly all noise was finally stifled by the sound of a door slamming shut from __**the basement**__._

_For a long moment the man in the bow tie stood in the halls of his gothic mansion. The silence echoing through the dust and decay of a sand strewn tundra of a dead city going on endlessly from the view of the broken windows. "If you run you only make it harder." He finished his thoughts. Placing the glasses on carefully, he glanced at the dollhouse. _

_The final act of "Giselle" came, hummed from his hollow throat as he gave a wistful move of graceful ballet interpretation toward the play set. The table scraped when he turned it so that the inner workings faced him. He moved his head with the unseen notes of the music in his mind as he reached inside. His thin, delicate fingers extracted an item that had been lying on a king size bed. It was beautifully crafted doll of a ballerina. She had satiny chocolate hair in a tight bun, her face paled like the moon, with life like golden eyes that seemed bereft of emotion. His loving and caring digits felt up the white wedding dress she wore, letting the sinfully soft material sooth his cuticles._

_Indifferently, the man began to hum louder as a tortured scream pilfered from the black lodging. He just simply stroked the doll's hair venerably as the voice trapped below called out a single name in her fear and shame. _

"_John!" _

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter One<strong>

_"The Woman."_

There were places like this all over the City of Los Angeles. These establishments tucked in corners in the dirty grimy alleyways in North Hollywood and behind warehouses on the docks. Made of cheap tinder wood, they sat like eye sours around the dusty deserts and mountainous terrain outside the city. They were the cheap bars and dives, not the expensive meet ups and hot scenes were reality stars, and A-list actors go after hours on Beverly. These were the lowest of the low, the dusty and dirty joints that no one wanted to go if they could help it. But with this crowd … it looked like they hardly had a choice.

There were pendants and championship banners from professional sports teams that gathered dust behind shut down pinball, and roller ball machines on the wood paneled floor and walls. Whatever this place was now, it had started years ago as a sports bar. But hard times had made it change hands, and themes. Places like this were revolving doors to ownership. One business owner can't pay, and the bank sells to another, machines, decor, and sundries included. Somewhere down the line of owners since the early 80's they forgot or found their caring wanton as what this place was supposed to be. There wasn't a cute theme, or a real purpose to a place like this. That is, beyond the obvious. They served hard drinks for hard luck cases that wanted to get hard drunk fast. That was the nature of these places, the nature of this city built on material dreams.

Suffice to say that this was not James Ellison's kind of place. He had grown up in Georgia where there were a thousand shacks and rundown biker haunts like this all over the cotton and peanuts covered back roads. His grandfather and his great grandfather had died in places like this. Sometimes he wondered if it was why his father was so hard on his children, on James most of all. He got a whipping when his report cards didn't have A's. He couldn't even remember the first time he had his first cigarette, even now when he smelt the tobacco in the air, he could see his daddy's fist snapping back to strike him again after the initial shock of the opening blow. Daniel Ellison wanted his children to be righteous, to be good. He wasn't sure he could sit with his wife and watch another member of his family get put down by the state.

To most kids this would make the other side more attractive, to desperately seek the unknown, the forbidden. But not James Ellison, from his pastor to his coaches, to even his training officers, they always said of the man that he was a good mold. He was a model student and he carried lessons in and out. He let them shape him into who he was. All his life he respected the law, as he did his father's desperate discipline. Between his Mama's bible, and daddy's hands he thought himself an instrument of Justice. It was an old arrogance carried by devout men of every religion. They did not question their obedience to God, and their purpose in his plan. For the Lord's will was righteous where ever his path may lead, as long as they follow.

But lately James Ellison had found a different path, a back road that he walked in the dark. Many nights he spent with his bible studying, wondering, and searching for salvation from the conundrums that haunted the still of his humble home and the sterile environment of his work office. There was darkness in his mind that sat heavily on his soul. It had been a year since he discovered the truth. It was a truth of Machines, Messiahs, and the end of days. He sat long into the night and wondered, and prayed on what it was he would do, what could he do? Forever did he fear of turning into Peter Silberman. The former Chief of Staff at Pescadero who had took to murdering hikers, and kidnapping people out of fear when James first met him. It was the fear of Sarah Connor's prophecies of the future. But for weeks and months Ellison knew that he couldn't just sit around. He couldn't wait, checking the bones, burying the bodies when the smoke cleared on the battlefields of a covert war that was yet to happen. But when he was deepest in his lost state of mind his salvation came. She came.

_The Woman _

He wasn't sure how she found him, but she had. He knew it wasn't the first time that she had been to his home. Opening that door he knew what he expected when he found her standing on his front porch. He expected to be thrown around, choked out … they found out about Cromartie. But _The Woman_ told James that they needed him, she needed him. For a long time he hadn't thought her human, it helped not to think of her like that. But he wasn't ready for her to come to him in that moment and show how vulnerable she was. How impossibly wrong he could've been about her. _They_ didn't understand her the way he had, she told Ellison. They didn't have the heart, the capacity for what had to be done. For a moment he thought she had come to the wrong house, if she was asking him for help with her mission. She shook her head, told him that she didn't want him to kill anyone. She just wanted information. She told him that she knew about Cromartie, knew what he wanted to do, and then she told him what his boss Catherine Weaver wanted to do with the machine.

After that he promised to help her.

The weeks and the months went by and she stopped by every Friday night. He'd tell her about what he could learn, who was operating the basement levels. Her face was stoic, nodding once or twice. In a strange way it had become a regular thing, three maybe five hours after work. He started making her dinner, not sure if she ate … what he ate. But she didn't complain, and she didn't refuse. It had been so long since he had a friend, and even though what they talked about was life or death, and it was _her_ he was talking too … he liked it.

Ellison gave a cough and mistakenly took a helping of rank dust from the wood paneled dive in his lungs. To make matters worse, a strong flop sweat beaded his bald head and ashy brow. He reached down under his arm pit and scratched through the material of his starched white button down, beads of blood staining the inside. He had always wanted to vacation in Mexico, but after what happened in Dejalo, and this nasty skin infection that wouldn't go away. At this point, after needing steroid injections for the Anti-biotic, East LA is was as far to Mexico as he wanted to get ever again.

He looked at the collection of neon signs and stared blankly into the spot where all the neon lights came together. Golden flecked chips of green and blue. It reminded him of _The Woman's_ eyes. It reminded him of how stupid they made him feel when he offered to show her a movie he rented. She glared that stoic, guarded frown at him, reminded him that she didn't come over to watch movies. He put it in anyway while he let her nose through his notes and observations of what Catherine was doing down there. She'd look up now and again and he even saw her smile once or twice. It was the first time that he had truly realized just how beautiful she was. After that she was no longer opposed to movies or opening little by little of her life to him over wings and pizza. It seemed almost healthy … as healthy as she could be, given who she was. He'd like to think that his home was a place where she could be herself, whatever or whoever that was.

But it eventually grew more than that.

The first time they made love it was like getting hit by a hurricane. She was like a force of nature when she was in his bed, leaving marks on him with her nails, and wanting him to leave marks on her. She promised that no one would see them by the time she got back. When they were done he'd be exhausted, and all he wanted to do was sleep. But she was never tired, and he began to wonder if she ever slept. He fell in love about the time she got up from the bed, wandering around unashamedly naked. There was a glistening sheen of heavenly sweat on her smooth beautiful body illuminated by the late wisps of evening sun. Ellison watched her pick things up, and try things on with curiosity. It was like she was looking at the mundane, every day thing for the first time. It made him wonder how long she had been living this life or if she always had. There was innocence to her curiosity and it made him love her even more.

Whirlwind was how he described it. The whole notion, the idea of what they were doing, what they were trying to stop. It should all be ludicrous to Ellison. And yet The Woman made it seem so romantic. When he had been married to Lila it was a quiet love. Lila was fun and happy, but career driven. After the chaos of a case she wanted a nice quiet night with a book and chest to lay back on. But with _her_, James had never felt more alive. He had never loved deeper, had laughed harder, and made love more passionately. She was like a fire, a flame of righteousness. The desperation, the spontaneity, the do or die of all her and James's plans and fears made the colors brighter, the sunsets more beautiful, and the nights more mysterious. Somewhere between looking into her stoic eyes as she shuttered from the throws of her last climax of the afternoon, and watching John Henry's development day after day. It had gone from a mission to preserve all of humanity, to just wanting to protect her, this woman he had pegged and feared as one thing long ago. He no longer thought about Messiah's and Machines. When he went to work, when he took information, he only thought of her.

And it scared him.

He'd open the drawer next to his bed, where he kept his grandmother's bible, his condoms and the nine millimeter and now he realized it might be all the same thing now. He knew what _The Woman_ was capable of, he'd seen it first-hand. The bible had warned of selfishness, and the repercussions of the great sins he was committing. In her hot embrace as she rode him, her glassy eyes looking through him as she gasped softly he'd told himself that they were sinning for the good of all. But nowhere did it say that anything good ever came from the sin of the flesh or of the barrel of a gun. She had assured him from the beginning that he wouldn't hurt anyone. But somewhere deep in his mind he knew what her intentions were. They were the same from the first time he saw her all those years ago. James Ellison's ignorance was gone and he knew now why they did it, her and her companions. But did that make it right? Was he doing the right thing? Was it selfish for loving her, and was this shadow of greed damning his soul and all of the people's he worked with and saw every day?

But what shamed him most of all even after leaving the house with her still inside, lying in his bed, it was that he had broken his father's rules. Cast away his hard teachings and turned to the bottle for the first time in his life. And all of it for one pondering query that he already knew the answer too. Was she actually capable of loving him, loving him the way James loved her? But most important of all was simply this …

Had he thrown his soul away for this woman?

* * *

><p>Out on the water waves came on and flowed out in a rhythm that was timed to seemingly nothing. It was possibly why many found the ocean to be a comfort through hard and anxious times in their lives. There was seemingly nothing that drove it, nothing that held it back for long. And all the great sea had was time. It put a man and his trouble in prospective when sitting at the shore and looking out at the vast empty spaces beyond the coming and goings of barges and large ships from port. It wasn't a typical evening that touched the California sky. It was soft and clear, a peaceful coagulation of autumn colors and violet that was so clear on the surf that it was like a rolling wash of two skies that seemed to meld together that went on and on, beyond the horizon.<p>

While on the rocky shores the sound of commotion of a busy Friday evening rushed over the serene calm of solitude. Strings of lights on the marina and the active piers came on to wink and twinkle with enchanting patterns, their reflections in the water was like a fallen star field in the receding tides. The nightly calm brought with it a unique gleaming portrait of a city of metal, glass, and concrete's lights glimmering in the calm Pacific waters. It was a cornucopia of color tonight, oranges, reds, purple, and all to the twinkling lights dancing to the obscure music of a radio in the distance. Sitting in the medium of natural and artificial beauty which man had wrought was like greeting an old friend to darkened emerald eyes.

It was a trait that not many possessed, to find the beauty and unique nature in all things. But it came second nature to John Connor. Since he could remember the youth had always seen the world differently than most people. In a childhood spent alone in motels with infinite time on his hands, John had learned to enjoy the simple things. He learned how each of their positive attributes and little miracles helped him. In a life in which he was supposed be afraid of everything, he had learned how to think beyond fear, and how to control his environment, to make use of everything around him. In doing so, he used each small moment to make his life better, to find the sweet spot and hold onto it.

To most people, behind him was a mismatch of glass, concrete, and metal. The city was jagged and ugly like the granite jaw of a hungry mythological beast. A dirty ocean of contaminated water, filled with sea weed and litter. Beyond it was an eye sore of a marina and crowded piers, horrid examples of extravagant wealth, loud mouth breathers, and obnoxious horns of large ships steaming into port. It should be the perfect picture to the bitter of an awful city. But only a man like John Connor could find a place somewhere were each factor met and within it created something so profoundly beautiful where he may make his home.

John wasn't particularly a positive person, and he knew too much of the future to be optimistic. But in a world of tragedy and loss, his only saving grace was to find whatever happiness and beauty he could squeeze out of his survivalist, drifter life, and marry himself to it.

Perched on the rocks he waited patiently, solitary amongst the pairs and groups of shadows and silhouettes that moved in his vision on the piers and yacht decks. In the time since John had arrived in 2007, he had longed, even before that to be a part of those groups. To be normal like all of his peers, flirting, laughing, and being happy. But recently he had become the opposite of that longing, embracing the label he had always been known as by others. In the months since he had thought "_her_" dead and afterward in danger of being murdered, John had to deal somehow with the misplaced anguish of those weeks. Somewhere deep inside himself he had touched a true darkness in his despair and fear. He had become dangerous and out of control in his hunt for the killer from the future that had come for the cyborg girl he loved. In his rage he had permanently maimed and crippled those he thought were his enemies and those who stood in the way. It all ended with the brutal slaying of the monster at his hands in a savage fight. Afterward, even in peace, you cannot touch the kind of darkness the youth had and simply go back to who you were, what you were. The hatred, the fear, and the desperation that turned to vicious rage, he wore all of the effects like a visible facial scar. His friends and family could tell there was something different about John, even if they couldn't put their finger on it. He seemed darker, more mature … tortured.

That was why his mom had encouraged tonight, thought that it would be good for John to get out. He was supposed to meet up with Morris and a couple of his cousins, pal around the peer, and ride the Ferris wheel. John left the house, but never showed up. He went to a seaside diner ate lunch, picked up a few things for the computer, and then he waited. Here by the rocks, John Connor waited as he had many nights. He fielded texts and phone calls from Morris. . "She" showed up looking for him, wondering if he was there. But then they weren't complaints from Morris, if anything they were courtesy calls from the kid to John asking if "She" taking his place that evening was cool. The youth didn't want to say yes, but he couldn't say no. No was a dangerous word, no was suspicious, no brought up questions that were circumvented to mothers who knew when something was going on under her own roof. Yes was not what he wanted to say … but it was safe.

With a glower he looked out toward the piers and the stands beyond. He could hear the laughter from where he sat. In his vision he could just make out the couples draped over one another on top of the large neon flashing carnival wheel. Somewhere Morris was in there, being himself, being the kid that made him John's friend. The youth knew that he would use all of that charm on _her_ tonight. She was already his prom date and he would try so desperately to make her more than that. He'd take her on the Ferris wheel, buy her corn dogs, and fail miserably at knocking down cups with whiffle balls. John wasn't stupid. He knew that she would never fall for it. But deep down a part of him wished that he could be out there, that _they_ could be out there with everyone else.

What he would give for just the novelty of placing his arms around his lover in a photo booth, for John to win her a stuffed animal in a marksmen contest. Or more likely she would win one for him. Throwing the blanket down and listening to a free concert, looking to the stars as the music washed over them. Her head laying against him as they counted constellations. But life had seldom been that easy for him, for them. For now and maybe for many more years to come this would be his life. Pretending to be the errant brother, the no cares roommate, the casual friend. Meanwhile he would wait on these rocks, knowing how he felt was so much more than that. But his emotions had to be hidden from the sight of others, like they always had been since that one question in Red Valley a thousand bullets, and imagined futures ago.

But this time it was different, this time he had been gratified. For just a moment he held his lover too close and knew what forever should feel like. It was like letting a thirsty man have a sip of water in the desert and letting the rest of the canteen tip over into the sand, making him watch the sun dry it all out. Some nights he thought he might go mad in his room, knowing she was just an open door away. But somehow he held on, like he always had. This wasn't the first time that John Connor had confronted the lonesome and solitary feelings of waiting alone in the dark evening for the one he loved the most to return to him after a night of entertaining another man. There was even a small part of himself that wondered if he had always been here waiting.

As he looked out toward civilization, which he had momentarily been distracted by, a figure walked across the shortened beach. Slender, stiff, and oddly graceful, she skimmed the surface. Her long legs carried her along as if she was floating, despite the deep impression she left in the soggy sand that was soft as a cotton pillow under her bare feet. Her long locks of straighten hair fluttered in the wind as she looked out toward the ocean and the painter's sunset that fired the last colors of the day. But when she became adjacent to John sitting above on the rocks, she paused. He felt her eyes on him, before he ever saw her. She was a presence he could feel in intuition that he couldn't explain, and that she herself doubted when he told her.

His head snapped back to the beach and found the lone girl standing below him, yards away. He didn't need the moonlight falling over her waterfront silhouette or the salty breeze caressing her hair to know the kind of beauty that had found him in his usual spot. They locked eyes, and even in the gathering darkness he was hers. He couldn't pin point if it was the setting of their meeting place somewhere between the sea and the stars, or it was just the smell of the night that got under his skin. But the girl had him in a trance.

Yet, instead of coming to him, she simply continued onward. He watched her leave a trail of perfect dancer's foot prints on the beach. The trajectory led to the forest of rotted wooden columns underneath an old abandoned peer. Standing on the edge of that forgotten place, she turned back to the young man on the rocks and enraptured his attention one last time, before entering. For a long moment John sat by himself, bereft of sense. It was as if he had been hit by a tranquilizer. His brain was sluggish and swimming in the intoxication of a calming drug. When he came to he was looking into his lap.

Slowly a large grin spread across his face.

Before leaving his perch, he gave a thorough look around to make sure he wasn't being watched. Coast clear, he hiked down the rocky seawall, landing with a puff and a crouch when he leapt off half-way down. Following her foot prints toward their usual meeting place, John kept a close eye on the rock line behind him. He was always aware that he might be followed by a host of people or other with ill or misplaced intentions.

He could smell the damp, salty, mold that always hit the senses hard. It should be unpleasant for him, but there was so much good that came from it, that he welcomed the stench of the unused pier. It was stuffed with old newspapers from the late 20's and other garbage pushed by the wind. It was dark underneath the wooden structure, but he went inside fearlessly, his love baring him with mighty cables toward the one who had tied them. He stepped over rotting cardboard, broken surf boards, a bikini top styled in the sixties, covered in decade's worth of grime. He placed a hand on the hollowed wood for support as he moved toward the end of the pier. At the edge, where the sand and ocean touch, the last several boards above had fallen away leaving a sunroof through the rotted frame. That's where she waited for him.

Cameron was standing as straight as a board the low tide rushed over her bare feet and ankles. She was looking out toward the horizon where the low hanging moon sat just above the water line. There were times in people's lives when they wished they could take a picture of a moment and keep it with them forever. Though knowing that it could never capture it as perfect or profound as what they saw in that moment. With the moonlight shimmering off her perfect peachy skin and glimmering in her golden eyes, John Connor couldn't think of one thing in the eternity of time that could ever be wrong or despicable about the love he had for the cyborg.

"I wasn't supposed to leave early."

When she spoke there was no emotion behind her voice, no inflection. "But I told Morris that Sarah demanded that I return home." She didn't turn to face him, and John didn't approach her, He took his time admiring the picture she posed against the setting. She was like a dream that he didn't want to wake up from, perfect in every way in his eyes.

"Why?" He asked watching the skirt of her white dress flutter in the wind.

This time she did turn to face him. She gave a rare blink and observed him with all the naivety in the twitch of her head of an avenging angel fallen from her heavenly sentry. "Because I knew you were here, alone." She replied.

He wished he hadn't, but he replied with instinctual anger, almost defensively. "Why? Thought I was vulnerable to attack?" He sniped at her possible reasoning.

She didn't seem to respond to his tone. "Yes …" She agreed softly. Then, the girl turned back to scanning the ocean.

He suddenly felt so self-conscious about himself. John Connor was his mother's son and often had a short and defensive temper. Whenever it surfaced it was often met by his family with counter snaps or hard glares. All that resulted was bickering or arguments about all things big and small. But for the Cyborg, she never met John's inherited temper with anger, never snapped back. She took it, a face the mask of naivety and innocence, as if she couldn't understand why he was angry with her. It used to make it worse. The girl had her ways of making flaws shone in the light with her passive attitudes.

"And because you were here, alone …" She repeated, her voice this time having something in it that was softer, the ghost of longing. She turned back to him. "I didn't come here to be entertained by Morris." As their eyes met the wind kicked up. Her hair was tussled forward, glossy strands framing her blushed cheeks. "I came here to be with you." She finished with a hard sincerity that punched John in the heart.

For the young man's part he had always been like this. Even when he was small he always punished the only woman he had ever loved when she returned after being away for so long. It took a night, a day even before he'd come around, to forgive Sarah for leaving him. But eventually waking up, seeing her there, her arms holding him … the love in her eyes. He could never punish her for long.

But tonight John Connor didn't have a night, he didn't have a day to punish Cameron. He only had these few precious hours when the world thought that they were at the pier or on the road home. He only had now to be with her, to shed this blanket and let the truth have its moment.

He stepped forward as if racing the seconds themselves. His callous hand reached out and gently brushed her soft hair behind her ear. His palm fell low to cup her cool fair cheek that felt like silk against him. It had occurred to him only now when they prayed for just a few moments alone, how little of it they had always had. Before they surrendered to destiny it seemed as if it was a slow torture to have so much time for themselves, alone and longing. Now it seemed what felt like eternity was actually only a few moments in real time. Now that they were alone with not a soul around them he put forth all the longing and need for her in a kiss that captured her lips.

It had taken time, a trial by fire, for the girl to understand this form of affection. John always had an abundance of patience, but he would admit stolen moments were ruined now and again by the cyborg experimenting rather than how a normal girl would have an intuition for her kisses. He had become frustrated with choking on a tongue, or his lip being bitten causing his curse to be loud enough for Derek to come see. He had the unlucky fortune of getting slapped by Cameron to cover the bloody lip with the excuse that John said she'd look fat in leather pants. But this time she had found the right placement and the right amount of force, and give. Her plumped glossy pink lips tasted like wet cherry, tasted like all of the hopes and dreams of what the future should be.

After a long moment they broke apart. When they did there seemed to be an enchantment carried by lapping tide, the night air, and the impossible love that the human and cyborg felt when they looked at one another. They didn't take even a split second to let John catch his breath. Almost immediately, he wrapped his arms around the ballerina's waist, her arms slid around his neck. They crushed against one another. John's maturity of body and spirit showed when he lifted the killing machine off her feet. He spun her in a circle just once like he always did. When they halted he buried his face in the crook of her neck with a smile. The girl looked satisfied, pushing her head against his.

There was something intoxicating, exhilarating, and potent proof about the forbidden nature of their love. It was the week's longing, the quiet traded looks across the table, quick kiss in the shed, holding hands in the bathroom for just a moment or two before Sarah passed by with the laundry. All of it building over days and sleepless night to that final moment when they could take refuge in their secret meeting place, to be together. To have just an hour or two to wrap themselves in a lifetime's worth of love.

They kissed again, it was shorter this time, their lips smacking as they broke apart. Golden eyes watched as John buried his face in her chest, breathing in the scent of her sweet perfume. Her slender fingers threaded through his hair watching her lover with an unreadable expression. John never now how deep and satisfying the belonging and purpose of this moment was as it flashed through each wire and processor in her one of kind chip.

BUZZ!

BUZZ!

The cyborg's head snapped like a bird of prey to John's jacket pocket as it buzzed. She looked back down to John who placed a kiss against the peachy skin of her chest, seeming to ignore it. "John …" She alerted him. He shook his head.

"Let it ring." He muttered into her skin.

BUZZ!

BUZZ!

"John." She replied again, looking down at him. "It could be important." She nagged, but allowing him to capture the supple skin of her throat between his lips.

"It could be mom telling me to get dinner." He kissed her cheek.

But before he could capture her lips again the girl craned her head back away from him. She didn't say a word, just tightened her cheek as her golden eyes met his disapprovingly.

BUZZ!

BUZZ!

With a long sigh, he kissed her soft throat again and set her back down into the sand. With one hand he retrieved his phone, with the other he continued to hold her close. As he answered, he shot an incredulous glare at his companion as she watched with anticipation. He was met with a beeping combination of code, to which he matched accordingly.

"_John?" _

"Yeah, mom …" the minute he heard the tone in her dark brooding voice he shot daggers at Cameron. Seeing that glare, the girl innocently looked away. Her hands clutching his old battle damaged black field jacket in her grip, taking in its familiar must.

"_Where are you?" _

"The pier." He leaned down and smelled Cameron's hair as she listened to the phone conversation attentively.

"_You're with your friend, Horace?" _

John glared. "Don't get cute. You knew the name of my second grade teacher's mistress." He chastised. At this Cameron twitched in eyebrow in interest. John kissed it.

"_I didn't trust her." _

"You didn't have too, if he was hiding her from his wife, odds are mom, that he's not going to bring her to school."

"_I don't like secrets …"_

At the admission, both John and Cameron shared a dependent look. For just a moment John felt ashamed of the game the two of them were playing with the family. If his mother or uncle knew what they were doing, it could get more than ugly. It could get very deadly. He knew that Cameron was in his head, when she attempted to take a step back. John didn't let her.

"It wasn't your secret to know." He argued as if they were talking about something else completely. To prove the sentiment he pressed Cameron anew to his chest, kissing the top of his lover's head.

"_Anyone who is in our life, I make it my business to know." _

John grinded his teeth and was about to respond to a clearly baiting authoritative tone Sarah used. But before he could answer, Cameron touched his chest. She gave a shake of her head. As an infiltrator she could easily pick up on voices and pitches. She knew almost immediately that Sarah was starting to become suspicious. John gave a long and agitated sigh into the phone, a slender hand resting on his heart as it thumped hard in anger in his ribs.

"_John?" _

He reached out and cupped Cameron's cheek, rubbing a thumb over her solid cheek bone. "Yeah …" He was only momentarily distracted by the contact, addicted to just being able to touch her.

"_I know that you're with your friend, but I need you to come pick me up. I'm in Burbank."_

John frowned separating from Cameron at the admission in alarm. "What the hell are you doing so far out there?" He asked in confusion.

"_John, I need you to come get me."_

Sarah Connor sounded uncharacteristically harsh over the line. The attitude she hit him with made her son defensive. "Why didn't you call Derek?" He asked hotly looking to Cameron longingly. Deep down he had a feeling their hard won, and long anticipated time together was slipping away like the tide at her feet.

"_He's stuck at the house … Cameron took the truck this morning, and we don't know where she's gone." _

He wished he hadn't, but the youth rounded on the cyborg immediately. John trusted her, he really did. But in the back of his mind he couldn't help but ask the old questions that often plague him. Where had she been all day? And what was she doing?

Sensing the suspicion Cameron reached out and traced John's temple. The soft, and strategic feeling of her slender fingers on him was like sunlight parting the threatening storm clouds in his mind. He let out a long sigh in her touch.

"I'm sure she'll show up." He smirked knowingly, turning his head into her open palm.

"_I'm sure …" _

With all his will he tried to make time for the feeling he didn't want to give up in Cameron's arms. But suddenly a question began forming in his mind that he couldn't shake. "If I have the Jeep and Cameron the truck … how did you get to …?" He started.

"_John Connor, I won't tell you again … __**Now**__!" _

He rolled his eyes. "I get it!" He snarked with a vicious snap. It was the first time in months John actually sounded like a normal teenager. He shut the phone with a clap and entertained Cameron with the frustrated motion of attempting to throw it into the sea. When he was done he sighed, and returned to Cameron who greeted him with a consolatory kiss. He buried her into his chest with a tight squeeze.

For a time they were quiet. John closed his eyes, absorbing everything around him. He could hear the sound of the gentle waves lapping close, the smell of the evening, the chill of Cameron's bare skin. For just a moment he held the girl too close, took too much of her into his heart. It made him sick, made him weakened in the knees knowing that they were out of time and yet, he couldn't let her go.

"We should go, John." The girl pressed her forehead to her peer's.

Emerald eyes welled with tears at the phrase. He shook his head, his eyes closed. "It's not enough time … they didn't give us enough time." Who "they" were was up for debate, Sarah and Derek, or the powers that be. Life seemed hard enough as it was living and sleeping under a time bomb that so few people knew was about to go off. But to live everyday under the same roof with the one you love and not be able to touch her, to hold her … Some mornings left John sore and aching.

Just when he was ready to resist the notion of leaving this spot till death, two hands reached up and framed his stubbled cheek. Dark, tormented eyes opened to find Cameron watching him with just a hint of sympathy. "There's next weekend and every one after that." She comforted. The emotionless, steady, unwavering assured statement gave the youth just enough strength to let go.

Fingers intertwined, the two teens returned to light from under the darkened remains of an old pier. They walked slowly back to their separate vehicles. The lovers savored the last moments of looking out over the shimmering water, reflecting the moonlight as they tarried hand in hand.

In the distance a tall silhouette stood against the back drop of glimmering city lights, concrete, glass, and metal. The figure was unseen as he watched the secret lovers retreat back into the moonlit beach as the boy halted their departure to catch one last glimpse at the silvery orb that lay parallel to the water line as if it was being raised from the oceans depths. A single grimy boot was perched on the retaining apex of the sea wall while shadowy eyes looked heavy and haunted as they watched the teens. From a coat pocket of beaten leather the man brought to light a pocket watch looped around a chain of tarnished silver. The old talisman seemed to have seen its better days many years ago. Scrapes and age was beaten all over the thick protective cover. Carbon scoring and fire scorches obscured the fine craftsmanship.

Thick grown out raven curls fluttered in the breeze. The moonlight highlighted a thin diagonal facial scar across one of two emerald eyes that watched as the boy brought the girl toward him with one last parting kiss. The two figures cast large shadows against the white washed sea wall as they came together. The man above lowered his head at the sight and closed the old pocket watch in a fist emotionally.

He gave the lovers one last longing gaze as they departed their separate ways into the night. When they were gone he looked out toward the horizon.

It was the feeling of the metal against his palm, the salty wind through standing buildings, and the sight of two opposite beings that should be enemies in the embrace of a secret, but true love. And it was this place, this glimmering, ugly skyline. As he slipped back into the shadows, he could feel all of this time period, in the air, in the taste of his mouth, and in the smell of the night. In them was every forgotten memory and emotion that crowd around him and filled him with a reminder of an old vow sworn long ago.

Like it was yesterday.


	4. Chapter Two: City of Angels

**Chapter Two**

_City of Angels_

Cold neon lights reflected off puddles on the sidewalks outside of the all night dives, and the barred and shuttered store front windows. Los Angeles, an idealized paradise in the light of day to the dreamers, a haven to the artist and big thinkers congregating to build monuments to themselves in the fountains of youth of entertainment. But at night when the world should be asleep, it became something else. A town of zombies and slaves, chasing the vices that helped them acclimate to the truths of the realities of this life they've chosen. The disheartened and disillusioned wandering the foundations of their ruined dreams toppled by the consistency of the word no. In the darkness it was a dirty place that hid its termites and roaches well from the suckers and idealists that would buy a one way here. In every dark alley, in every poorly lit street corner, the city was rank with lonely hearts, bad intentions, and desperation.

In this mismatched skyline filled with towering glass spires reflecting thirteenth floor gargoyles of abandoned deco buildings standing forgotten like eroded prison towers. Where billboards for a reality television star's fashion line overshadowed acid rain washed murals of sailor, soldier, and pilot saluting an ancient war bond advertisement. Here in the darkness of this town the past and future walk hand and hand through each grimy, trash strewn, and dangerous back alley. There was something about it that couldn't be pegged. All around the world, in every continent and country each city has its problems- its pros and cons. But somehow Los Angeles' problems seemed to intermingle with the success that brought people here in droves every year. Thus, everything good was mixed with pain and trouble; every evil and terrible act had hope attached to it.

In a town full of immigrants from all walks of life and parts of the world with the hope of a break-out role, screenplay, or even just to eat that night, each one of them brings their own tragic story to these gridded streets with Spanish names. The old saying was dreams die hard. But here on these filthy sidewalks where tall buildings erupted from their roots like a glass and metal jungle filled to the brim with all sorts of wild animals … Dreams were only a part of what dies here. In Los Angeles you couldn't step into an alley or enter a bar room without tripping over a beached hope - a fallen star wished upon by some broken dreamer.

Eventually they all end up here. Surrounded by tall buildings and ancient mission cathedrals, stands a single, towering, white stone art deco bastion lost and unseen in the iconic skyline. It was the one place where the true face of every inequity of human misery and suffering produced by this awful city could be seen within every wing and room, like a perverse art gallery. This place wasn't a private clinic on Beverly, a gated office in Malibu. This tall building was a monument to reality, its halls filled with the truth of everyday life. Its sterile white walls and cold corridors echoed with busy footsteps and pages from the PA system. There were few places this late at night that were this busy. The Central City Hospital would always be one of them.

Down in the basement levels of the hospital it was a different story. There was a chill that filtered through these dark abandoned halls in the dead of night. If you could avoid coming here, and most do, you would. Some call it creepy, some call it a waste of time, for those who are admitted to this wing with the flickering yellow fluorescents above and the silent halls would find no consistent visitors here. No boyfriends with flowers, a pretty girl tracing you nose as you awoke, a mother crying in a silk hanky over a broken leg. The only visitors here were the butchers and the lawyers, come to make sure what to expect in the lawsuit as they carve out your cold heart from your chest to make sure it was your fault it stopped. Not that you would care … you're already dead.

Colder than an ice house and quiet as a church, there was an inherent darkness to the Central City Morgue that gathered around the edges of what little light could be found within. From the floor, silvery flood lights rose to the ceiling, bathing the rows of metal slots and the eighty year old gold crucifix on the tile wall in strange shadows on their shiny surfaces.

But it wasn't the death that bothered Doctor Felicia Burnett; it was the isolation of it all. The desolation of knowing that there was nothing more to this room than there would be to a meat locker in Pittsburg. This wasn't a room filled with murder victims. They weren't normal lives cut short by the heinous actions of the one or many. It was the inevitability of knowing that every person in this room died of natural causes, died because it was their time. It was proof beyond a shadow of the doubt that all of us were truly mortal, and that no one gets out alive.

It should put everything in prospective for her every time she comes here, her nightly visits. It should convince her that she should get out there and make her mark. To move on from this life and go do all the things she wanted. Use her grandmother's pottery secrets she bequiffed to her all those days after school in the Arizona heat, and open her own business. Take her savings and go to Norway, Holland, see something amazing. Meet a man there, muscular and blond. He could whisper sweet nothings in her ear as he makes love to her. To sleep in his big Viking arms and feel safe.

But it doesn't come.

Night after night, Felicia Burnett comes to this morgue and sits on the slab where "she" had been. It was the counter where the doctor had saved a life and took another. She sits there and stares at the brown stain where a dead body had lain. She can still see him there. She can still smell his after shave; see the sweat stains under his arms from a long frolic in the desert. Her shift ended hours ago and yet she still comes here and struggles to understand what had happened in those few minutes. She struggled to understand why she did what she did. No one blamed her, no one prosecuted her … they found the restraints in his closet, a collection of her bloody panties in a box, and the scars from his lash on her pale back and studded paddle marks on her bare rear end. No one blamed her, said it was right … her sister told her it was about damn time that she did it. But why was she still here? Why couldn't she move on? When she slept she dreamt of the pistols recoil, the black hatred in Alvin's shocked expression as he died, and green eyes … always green eyes of a sweat soaked woman so beautiful and tortured that lay on this table. Those eyes that drew Felicia in, made her trust them, made her feel protective of this vulnerable creature. This woman told her story, which was Felicia's, and the doctor never looked back.

Some would say the emptiness was shock, was the guilt of what she had done. It was the realization that she had a life of her own for the first time since Santa Clara State. No. It wasn't anything of the sort. Felicia had shot a man, killed the man she loved, all for green eyes. She basked in their fire, felt the desperation and the seriousness of the web she weaved for the doctor who would've done anything for them. Being in the wounded woman's life even for that instant made her feel like she was doing something, something important, something life changing. That sweat soaked beauty had shared her life, her compassion, and her deepest moments while on the cusp of death with Felicia and then she was gone. The resident had been a part of something mysterious, something so important and now that she was gone, those green eyes left a crater where the mundane of her regular life working toward her mundane goals had been.

Doctor Felicia Burnett could go anywhere or do anything she wanted. But it would never be as important, intense, or emotionally capturing as those few hours had been. As she slips off the cold slab and walks out, she thinks of Holland to make herself feel better. Tomorrow she would be back, forever in thrall to green eyes, a fake story, and the names Sarah and Reese.

The door swung open, letting flickering yellow light inside, as she switched off several over heads. The pretty blond in the pony tail, long sleeve, and scrub pants took a good look at the stained linoleum, said a deputy's name like a curse and walked out. The heavy metal lined door swung back violently, before caught by the air. It didn't slam, the door only clicked with a heavy thud. Once again the world fell into a still, sullen quiet.

Suddenly there was a jump of shadows, and something moved in the dark from the back of the morgue. It's hard to see, and even harder to know if it's the trick of the fluorescents outside or just a flaw in the flood lights below. You'll know there's something there when a figure passes over the silver light. It was present three minutes before Felicia Burnett arrived, and stood unseen in the dark till she was gone. The obscure shadow stopped in front of an examination slab and a hand turned on the overhead light with a click. Hardened emerald eyes were glinting and reflected in the light as they look down on the naked body that lay half covered by a linin shroud. The body is a bald black man, whitened lips of death, stiff limbs, and a blank expression on his cold face.

His name is James Ellison, and he died of a heart attack last night. That's what the world thinks, that's what they know. But it takes someone from a different one, a time yet to exist to know it's something more than that. Green eyes, familiar to a haunted doctor, narrow as they rake the body observantly.

The dark avenger didn't know much about the victim and James Ellison was hardly known to the his mother and father when he died. So there weren't any truly accurate pictures that he could rely on. There were records, personnel files, federal performance reviews. But fifteen years in his father's army had taught the detective that bureaucracy was hardly a trustable source. So, he would take what he did know and walk back from there.

James Ellison was a federal agent, which meant he was college educated, a pre-law degree. Not a lawyer, but must have worked for the District Attorney's office here in city before Quantico, so the school must have been in at least Southern California. The tales he had been told of Dejalo Mexico in his childhood labeled Ellison a deeply religious man. He must have _loved_ this town. All those factors meant that James Ellison was an ambitious, arrogant, assertive man that was used to being the righteous authority he respected like a god. He was, to his beliefs, this demi-god of righteousness for nine years, the first two he was a rising young star, smart and dogged. The next seven he became a pencil pusher. Some burn hot in the spotlight, and combust at the change of temperature. That fair weather changed to a hurricane that came in 1999.

Every detective has that one big case that eludes them. It's the one that got away, the one murder that wakes each one of them up in a sweaty mess, all the while dazedly stuttering out names and details. For James Ellison it was eight years ago, and her name was Sarah Connor. The vigilante knew better than most that chasing the ghost of Sarah Connor would make or break a man. And like so many others before and after she had broken James Ellison and ruined not only his career, but the man himself, forever. For the Detective, his Black Dahlia would always be his first, and it would be his last. Someone had murdered a little boy's mother in cold blood when he was too small to understand why, and it's a question that would elude him all his life, till tonight.

Time to begin.

Many years later that now grown child lowered the overhead more. The LED made the frozen corpse almost shine in the harsh illumination. The man was easily in his early forties, wrinkles around the eyes, and forming at the edge of his mouth. They were more prominent, he had more stress in his life than most, the torment of a hard job, of personal guilt, all of the above.

Immediately the vigilante noticed big red patches all over the man's ashy skin of his shoulders and chest. They ran like skid marks down his right side. It seemed that Ellison had contracted a very bad skin rash. Following up, he noticed the sunken and dark circles of sallow eyes forever closed. This man had been very sick when he died. There was also a strange substance that stained the broad man's brow. Reaching into a well-worn coat of beaten leather, he retrieved a Zeiss magnifying glass. Though the instrument, his _mother's_ last birthday gift to him, looked like an antique, the craftsmen's authenticity mark claimed that it wouldn't be made till several months from now. Squinting through the lens the Detective saw that there were salt calcifications on the man's face, most notably his forehead, tear ducts, and temple. When Ellison died, he had been sweating profusely. The quick preservation and freezing of the body had caused the sodium to solidify and stain on the skin.

The dark figure began to pace away thoughtfully for a step or two as he began pondering. James Ellison had died of a heart attack, sweating was obviously a symptom, nothing out of the normal. But the skin rash and dark circles were not. The former FBI agent was obviously suffering from a viral infection. The vigilante had seen it before, down in Mexico during the war. Most of the detachment had contracted it when they got back to Los Angeles. It was easily treatable with antibiotics and a round of steroids to help it keep up with the contagion cells that multiplied quickly. But he had never seen it ever get this bad, not even from the local populations. This was a technological age, a less dire time period than the one he had grown up in. How did someone working for a six figure tech corporation not find treatment?

Tugging on his chin thoughtfully his eyes narrowed as he looked back at the body in puzzlement. Maybe the best answer to that question lay where he had died. Slipping out of the light and toward the back of the morgue, the man grabbed a white trash bag with a black symbol on a red field that signified medical waste. Moving to an empty slab the man dumped the contents of the bag on the shiny metal surface and flicked on another overhead. In the LED light a pile of clothing lay bunched together. He rubbed his soul patch thoughtfully a moment observing the clumped mess of the skeleton of a stiff formal work suit. Grey slacks, a starched white shirt, matching business socks, and expensive loafers.

Pocketing his magnifying glass, and with a snap of a white latex glove, the man began rubbing his gloved hand against his cotton long sleeve till he could feel the static at the ends of his fingertips. Taking hold of Ellison's suit pants he gently ran the gloved hand over the length of the backside of the gray slacks. When he was done there was a dark powdery substance offsetting against the white medical glove. Gently, the detective rubbed his fingers together, granulating the coarse powdery coding between his index finger and thumb. He gave it a whiff as he continued rubbing it. He smelt saw dust and peanut shells. A theory that didn't make any sense began forming in his mind as he dumped the pants back on the table.

Next, he grabbed the man's shirt and held it up to the light. It was perfectly starched and ironed in extraordinary lines. A picture of James Ellison's past began to form. Only a well-practiced housewife could iron with such precision. This was a clear sign that James Ellison must have been taught by his mother how to iron, which meant that he grew up in a traditional family. He'd be a man who would have a moralistic view of the world through the prism of Southern values and protestant faith, a combination that made a cop from the moment he was slapped on the ass in the delivery room. Speaking of slapping, the detective knew also that it spoke volumes that men with a snappy fashion sense, who went to mechanics, and knew the finer secrets of laundry, spent much time with a mother. In a traditional family with two parents it was obvious that James's father didn't like him very much or that his mother was trying to protect him … either way it was an abusive childhood. Possibly it wasn't the slap in the delivery room but of a father's hand that made young Ellison carry a badge.

Like the powder on the glove, he gave the shirt a sniff or two. It was stained with the stench of Sweat, cigarette smoke, alcohol, saw dust, and just a hint of a sweeter scent that tickled his memory with static that couldn't quite form a picture in such a weakened state. He shook it off and focused on what was right in front of him. James Ellison had breathed his last breaths of life on the floor of some shitty Hollywood dive. Smoke and alcohol confirmed the dive, and the wood mulch had the particular scent of the old movie sets that a little boy had played on in the snowy abandoned lots in Studio City after Judgment Day.

It was a strange change for a man like Ellison who would be by all accounts a creature of habit. Even if divorced, the former fed was still married to his evangelical roots. This made visiting a bar not a rare occasion with a social call, but alone at a seedy dive a very uncharacteristic one. There were two things that could drive a man to places like those … He had been fired or he felt guilty. It certainly wasn't the later. But what was it that James Ellison could feel guilty about that it drove him to drink?

The Detective knew about the North Hollywood raid, it was the first thing he researched before coming here. Cromartie, the Boogey Man of every scary childhood story the old man had ever told him, had slaughtered 20 FBI Hostage Rescue TAC team members, including one of the supervising officers. The man's heart didn't go out toward the former FBI Agent, the moron wasn't thinking. The truth was right in front of him and he didn't have the wits to see it, though he'd bet Ellison does now. Being the last man standing, the lone survivor … its hard living down. A lonely station, filled with endless nights pondering what you could've done different, and second guessing every move you ever made. There was guilt to it, but if Ellison had lived this long without going to a bar than certainly it wasn't survivor's guilt that landed him there last night.

He turned the shirt over in observation as he thought. It was when he saw the extensive brown stains within the shirt that he was intrigued. At the bottom right, inside the button down, touching the rib cage, was dried blood stains streaking over the expensive material. They were in scratching patterns, a nail digging into the material and chaffing it against irritated skin. Of course he had a skin rash, and it must have been torturous, judging by how bad it had grown on him. But he didn't see any open wounds. Placing the shirt down, the Detective returned to the body. With a flutter of the death shroud he folded it down to the man's hips. A sudden cringe and tightening cheek met the new sight.

All around James Ellison's rib area there were fields of tiny boiled cysts, and swollen patches of infected skin. It ran up from the waist to the length of his collar bone. It wouldn't be that hard to figure out what gave him the heart attack. An infection this bad must have sent the poison through the blood stream and caused his heart to seize up. Sweating, itching, and aching, it was a horrible way to die.

He followed the sores and infected skin down to the scratch marks, and noticed the nail pattern. Despite all the other areas on his body, this was what he was scratching the most. It started to make sense when it seemed that the entire area seemed swollen and ugly, more so than any other. He drew his Magnifying Glass from his coat's outer pocket and used the lens for a closer look. It would've been impossible to see without magnification but now it made sense. All along the ribcage area where each swollen cyst had formed were needle track marks. The cure for this illness was antibiotics and steroids injections. It would seem the victim was following protocol, but for the fact that if he were injecting steroids into his body without the medicine it would only grow the infection more and more till eventually it would break him down.

James Ellison had been a dead man before he even walked into the bar. That's what the butchers and lawyers will say when they open him up. Their doctors would not be liable for the man's honest amateur mistakes, and it's not their fault that he didn't pay attention to what he was doing. Officially it will say, without him knowing it, James Ellison had been slowly killing himself for months.

Or someone had.

The Detective's mind wandered back toward the sweet smell that he could almost taste on the tip of his tongue. The memories lingered just out of his reach like swirling fog. It was a certain perfume, maybe even a lotion, or hand cream, feminine. And then it hit him. He still had no memory of the scent but it belonged to a woman, a woman preying on a broken man's sympathies, a woman who wanted something from him …

Lying here on this morgue slab in Central City Hospital was the pebble in the pond. The ripples of last night's murder would not stop till three billion were dead at the hands of a vengeful AI seeking justice for a murdered friend. The girl, along with many others before her had been killed by a shadowy figure whose assassinations were covered by a perfect ambiguity as she dooms the future.

Long ago Ryan Reese Connor swore a vow that he would never forget, never forgive, and never stop till he had avenged his murdered mother. For twenty-seven years he had carried that anger with him through battlefield, investigation, and fights. He kept on even when others retired and deemed the war over. He didn't stop till he had hunted down and dusted every last one of them, each one he missed, every psychotic, mutant, and machine who had killed his friends and family. Now standing in the dark of a cold morgue many years from where he started, surrounded by death, he had come full circle. There was just one left, the name that started it all, the person he vowed to kill before he even knew what death was.

La Llorona … _The Woman._

* * *

><p>Far away from skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and chain super markets there are homes built into the sides of arid mountains and wild hills all along the Southern California terrain. They belong to filmmakers, actors, actresses, their agents, Plastic surgeons, and well-to-do business associates. For years and years since D.W. Griffith brought his flicker to this one horse town of cattle pastures and old missions they have cropped up in many places. Communities like Laurel Canyon, Beverly, Bel-Air, Westwood, and the Hills. They weren't like other neighborhoods, the comings and goings of nine to five work days in Malta, a fight with the spouse immortalized in the press, the Times knocking on your door for a statement when your kid with the first ex-husband is caught dealing pot on Sunset.<p>

These places were hardly real life, but a life of privilege and illusion. These were homes that belonged to those who had made their mark on current society and held the keys to the kingdom that they brooded in guilt about. They swam and swarmed in the cultural zeitgeist in abundance, in adoration, and felt a sense of community … like a school of fancy fish. They smiled while they sniped at one another behind their backs, and talked of business and politics. It was more business than politics. Politics was for the most part assumed. It was a silent agreement that anyone not on a coast and below Washington DC were childish, ignorant, flag waving savages that needed _their_ special insight. They all lived in an awful country that is there shame, despite the opportunities it gave them. And most of all they believed that there should be more diversity and racial tolerance. This is all said as they roll their eyes at the Hispanic waiter who offers them food, offended that he didn't know of the special diets they were on for a multi-million dollar TV show being shot next summer in Croatia.

Tonight, a contingent of these people had congregated to the rustic hills above a glinting city of Angels. It was a home surrounded by lush trees that almost seemed Technicolor during the day, but for tonight they were strung with large bulbs of festive white lights. Beyond a black iron gate was a large two story recreation of a traditional Italian villa. A red tile roof, white stone steps, and a grandiose backyard. It's a lively place, filled with Beatnik acoustics, excited chatter, and fake laughter. The tables were set with expensive wines, outlandish cheeses, and other dishes that one had to have a special pallet for. That is, a pallet made of green paper and dead presidents. This place oozed money, it oozed pretentiousness … This was Hollywood.

But this wasn't like the other parties in Hollywood. This was a special party, for only the special few. The invites were sent via e-mail. It started with ominous music to a black and white animated map of the United States. The animation didn't look cheap, and Walt Disney would've been proud. Suddenly the country is grabbed by a fist and crushed. It was a knock off of your standard propaganda film circa 1938 Berlin and 1961 Moscow. New York City ablaze, The White House being overrun, all of America doomed in this Disney animated apocalyptic nightmare. But what caught everyone's eye wasn't the animation, or the vague message, it was who was doing the destroying. As the stars and stripes burn away, the enemy, who were locked in square legion formations and goose stepping down Wall Street, were thousands and thousands of robots. They weren't the usual type of machines either, the out of this world science fiction Cylons. They were frightening metal skeletons. These Human like aggressors had large lipless rictus grins, seemingly emotionless and, yet gleeful to dominate all living things on earth. At the end of the video it asks in bombastic black and white who was going to protect you from what was coming?

It was reposted and went viral within minutes and was rebroadcast by cable news channels, even a thirty second spot on ABC Nightly News. The buy in for this meeting was modest at best, but as interest sparked it turned into a nation-wide bidding war of the richest and most elite of the top one percent of America. All of them interested in what it meant and what the party was all about.

But as the son of a Detective Lieutenant, the Grandson of a Police Captain, and LAPD in his blood going back all the way to the 1930's when the bank got the family ranch in Texas, Derek Reese could smell a Hollywood scam a mile away.

He had hoped full heartedly that they had gotten past this fly by the seam Marlowe bullshit that Sarah had gotten into after Mexico. At first he had told himself at least this didn't have to do with the damn "Three Dots" she had been chasing. But after seeing what she instructed John to pay for two tickets, he'd take warehouses in the desert than this. Derek had argued it with Sarah all day, all last night, and every day before. He had reminded her that they weren't made out of money, and while they could afford the buy in, the likelihood of them finding anything relating to the Turk seemed slimmer and slimmer the closer to the Hills they got.

While munching on rancid tasting French cheese, and watching hired Chinese acrobats spider across trees on satin ribbons, he heard a loud rip roar of laughter that echoed inside the house. It drew people away from the show and toward the open dining room. It felt as if they were all mocking the eldest Reese in his own private hell. He shifted his jaw in annoyance and checked his watch. Popping the last cube of white cheese in his mouth and tossing out the moldy one, he moved toward the house.

As he navigated through huddles of three to four people watching the oriental feats he found that he wasn't entirely unstylish for the occasion. He was informal, but still dressy with the button down, black pants, and matching collarless jacket. It was easy to assume that he wasn't one of them, but was still barely accepted. He could be a body guard or part of a security detail for some heiress, or actress. He wouldn't be the only one here. The rest of the security weren't exactly inconspicuous people, big guys, and stalky women, casual but still stiff and observant. They weren't cut for the part that they were dressed for. Luckily they weren't there to guard the house, just the people, and most of them stayed outside. No one could have a good time with someone hovering … Derek wasn't even sure how John could do it with the metal all day in the future.

Walking past the tiled patio, protected by Tuscan beams wrapped in ivy and strings of low hanging multicolored star lanterns, he entered into the kitchen inside. The villa's dining area was as big as some shacks were a family of three lived in the future, with a hundred times the grandeur. An elongated dining room table of oil rubbed cherry sat just inside of the white doors. Above a matching tile island embroidered with rose designs were racks for pots and pans. Every inch of both table and island were covered with bottles of Wine, Champagne, Sherry, bubbly, and bourbon. It was an unhappy wife's paradise. And it so happened that's what he found congregated. Glasses held to their chest, haughty laughter in the air.

The island was where a collection of women, old, middle age, and somewhere between had gathered. They were mostly blonds in shiny party dresses, slinky folds, and lots of cleavage. Derek recognized some of them from his youth, and some from the supermarket checkout aisle. But this party was hardly a star studded event. These women were famous because four months out of a year a camera crew follows them around country clubs, spa weekends and girl's nights out. All in the hopes of seeing them lie, backstab, and claw each other's eyes out. They got a foot in the door of television for being wives of money men and investors that advised Tinsel Town's talented ones. Reality TV shows bought and paid for by unfaithful men married to unhappy women who could tear each other apart and leave him alone as he hides his child support payments to the mistresses. It's not that big of a secret, and most of the wives know about it … but the fame, the camera, and most of all the wine helps them cope with a mistake made at nineteen when they thought this life, this husband, was just a stop gap to stardom.

Derek looked around and didn't find any woman under the age of thirty. That was the only thing that made him feel better about this night. If this had been a star gazing affair or worse, a club scene with wall to wall drunk debutants and studio heirs than he would've known they had made a big mistake. But this had all the makings of a business party. The wives, the booze, and their gathering meant that they had all been dragged here by their husbands ordered to attend by their clients. There was big money involved in this venture.

Derek watched from behind the flock as one of the women standing around the island was upset. She had platinum blond locks with dark highlights. She wore a blue nylon evening dress that pushed her cleavage up to her neck. Against the Tuscan whites of the kitchen the woman looked like a piece of warped wood with her outrageous tanning bed complexion. If she didn't get skin cancer when all of this is over, the soldier would denounce god.

"And … and I just can't believe it! There it is just lying there … dead!" She dabbed her eyes with a napkin and sniffed. "You should've seen its poor eyes, so red and helpless. It just … it's just so criminal!" She exploded theatrically.

Another woman, brunet, with a face pumped with enough poison to be a Geneva violation on the battlefield reached out and touched the woman's hand. "Oh, Sadie." She clicked her tongue in sympathy. "It must have been so hard, seeing that poor monkey like that." She turned to side eye all the other hens who cooed in sympathetic agreement.

She nodded. "I thought when I went to the Congo and I saw what those poachers do to those poor apes, I'd stamp out animal cruelty with my charities … but to see what happened to that poor _Albino Ape_, and outside my own restaurant!" She slapped her hand on the surface dramatically. "Who could be as cruel as to kill something so kind hearted and trusting?" She clutched the napkin to her heart. Derek took a moment to ponder how many arguments this drama queen had started over the slightest comment and ended by threatening to kill herself over the phone. She must have made her children's lives a merry hell all through their days.

One of the women leaned in. She was petite with unnaturally tight cheeks and platinum blond hair. Her long sleeve dress was sequenced dark blue. "You didn't hear it from me …" She put her hand up to the side of her cheek as if telling a secret. "But I think it might have been Mexicans." She nodded as there was a commotion of humor filled chortles amongst the housewives. The soldier figured this one was the designated idiot of the group, and he could tell why. The petite woman looked around naively at the humor her theory had gained. "What? I hear they eat anything over where they come from." She argued. The man wasn't shocked that someone like her would say that, or that all of her fellow "TV stars" were starting to agree with her.

"Well the last time I went to Mexico, I woke up next to the gorilla … and had to for the next sixteen years after."

Everyone exploded into a fit of laughter from the comment from the youngest member of the group. Derek didn't recognize the voice, but he knew who it belonged too. Long tresses of tussled raven curls were in a bun on the top of her head, while the rest fell down to her back. Her creamy skin matched the elegant folding turtleneck and a pearl necklace. She had deep, fierce green eyes that were sharp enough to cut a finger with. The natural regal beauty, even with the flaws, made her seem even more stunning surrounded in the crowd of women that were cut and filled by cosmetics chasing the youth that had passed them by.

It was hard for Derek to take his eyes off of her, and he wasn't sure why. Her smiles came easier here, her expression carefree while armed with a glass of wine. He'd never fool himself into thinking this was the real person, but it was another side of her that could've existed before all of this started when she was a teenager. And maybe a little bit of Derek Reese wanted to get to know her, buy her a drink, just to see that infectious toothy grin without an agenda behind it.

When a sad smirk touched his lips he knew that Sarah Connor was unnaturally talented at this. Of course this wasn't Derek's world. He was the son of a cop and a young woman used and abused by these types of people. He had grown up hating them, knowing what they used to pay his mother to do, and the long nights they kept his father away, cleaning up their messes. He remembered so vividly his mother pacing the floor boards all hours of the night in her nightgown, worrying, knowing the dark deeds inside these people that knew they could get away with anything in this town. But watching Sarah, he couldn't believe how easily she had all of them eating out of her palm. She was more than just a natural, it was as if she was born amongst them, and bred to be one of them. She knew how to approach them, knew what to say, knew what to drink, and how to drink it. The wives and even the husbands had all gathered around her, laughing, hanging off every word she said.

A part of that was obviously posturing and image conscious moves. It was a competition to see whoever among the women could buddy up with the youngest. The prize was showing off who was the most in touch with the younger generation. But most of it was all Sarah, her beauty, her charm, and her charisma. He'd seen it before. In the future John Connor could work a room like no one Derek had ever met till tonight. He had always figured John had gotten it from Sarah. Kyle, the saints love him, was no natural leader. He, in fact, was not a well-liked guy in the Resistance ranks. Kyle Reese was a hot headed, lone wolf, honorable, boring, righteous jackass. He tagged along with Derek and the rest of the guys, but none of them were his friends, and he didn't consider them as such. John was his only friend, John and the goddamn picture. And just like Kyle, Derek was staring at that picture for so long that even she had felt it.

Having a moment, Sarah looked up from a grin amongst the crowd of high class hens. Slowly it melted away and an annoyed scowl momentarily replaced it. The woman didn't like it when people looked at her, especially the way Derek did. She'd prefer his classic rolled eyes that told her she was an idiot or the bane of his existence. This amicable consensus of one another was comfortable and usual for the both of them. But in the private moments when the soldier from the future looked at her the way he was now, it made her feel rooted in something else. It was something intimate and familiar. It was hazel eyes that melted her soles to the ground, robbed her of the freedom to cut ties and run whenever she wanted too. There were feelings in those high beam headlights, the kind that made you think that if you died tomorrow there would be someone who cared. She had those kinds of people in and out of her life since Kyle. Charlie had been the last, and though it hurt her, she still felt she could cut and run on him, and that's what she did. But Derek wasn't Charlie, she couldn't run from Reese. And it wasn't even that he'd give chase, it's just that unlike Charlie … Sarah needed Derek. She needed him more than she had ever needed anyone in her entire life. And it made her want to love him so much that she wanted to kill him.

"What?!"

Derek gave a hard blink when a pale hand gripped his arm harshly. He found that Sarah had excused herself, and had come to accost him. Her pearly crooked teeth of English dentistry were clenched when she hissed at him.

He shook his head and cleared his throat. "Nothing" he looked away. Her angry emerald eyes were so sharp they were like a knife to his throat. Sarah began to lead them away, folding herself around his arm as if he were her escort.

"What did you find out?" Sarah asked quietly as they wandered to a dark hallway.

Derek took the wine from her hand. "Chinese acrobats don't have spines." He replied finishing the glass. His companion's reaction was predicable with an added roll of the eyes. She took the glass from his hand and rounded hard on him as she dropped it on an end table outside a hallway. But he didn't back down. Her frustration was a front and he knew it.

She paused in the dark hallway, the white plaster walls hung with plaques from the local chapter of the DNC, the wildlife preserve, and other assorted environmentalist awards. Crowded around them were pictures of a whole family with a female congresswoman with a tight unmovable face at a Northern California vineyard. Around them were pictures of a screaming flower woman holding protest signs outside an airport in the late 60's. Sarah bit her lip, crossing her arms as she leaned back against that wall.

"Well how about you?" Derek pushed. Waiting patiently, he looked at the pictures of anti-war protests with a shake of his head. She observed him ruefully, watching his classic military posture, straight with hands behind his back. She averted from his gaze as they went from pictures to Sarah.

"The host is a high class accountant …" She started. "Apparently he was doing the books for some tech company and found out that some AI prototype got stolen. Now he and his wife want to pull everyone's money together in a hedge fund just in case the criminals use the stolen goods for some big time cyber-heist." She reported. There was an edge of defensiveness to her watching Derek stare absently at plaques above her head. Impatiently, Sarah waited for the soldier to drop the hammer on her.

But Derek only made a soft snorting noise and shifted in place. "Funny how he didn't report it to the police." He mused. After a long moment, they let one another make eye contact. "Sounds like these people are about to vacate town, and looking for an early retirement from some generous donations from their unsuspecting friends." He rubbed his soul patch thoughtfully.

"It could still be Skynet, Reese." She argued. It was mostly to save pride. "He was working for the Technology Company with AI's." She mentioned with a nod. "If we press them, we could find out …" Sarah paused and set her jaw as Derek shook his head.

"It's a scam, Sarah."

"But the Tech Company robbery."

"Corporate espionage, look up Adobe and Apple someday."

"I'll just ask John … since he seemed to have told you already." Sarah sniped at the unlikelihood of Derek knowing about Apple history without story time being had over a couple of hotdogs on a park bench. The soldier shot her a glare, but for an instant despite themselves they traded a grin. There had never been a partnership that cursed and felt plagued by the very existence of one another, and yet never gained more grudging pleasure in being in each other's company as Sarah Connor and Derek Reese.

"Let's press'em, Reese."

"No, let's find a way to get our money back before they jump ship to Peru."

"Oh, Sarah, there you are!" Their hostess appeared at the mouth of the hallway. Her heels on the tile made her walk sound like horse huffs on a cobble stone street, an apt description for the woman in general as Derek saw it. They watched as she staggered over toward a wall bound Sarah talking closely with Derek who leaned on an arm anchored comfortably next to her head.

"Sadie!" The playful wit on Sarah's face was placated by a less than genuine smile as she slipped out of the private space she and Derek had created for themselves. Quirking an eyebrow, the man turned toward Sarah when he noticed that the emerald eyed woman was talking with an English accent that was highly polished and refined. It wasn't the cockney that Americans did in lampoon or for joking. It seemed so natural that that it felt that the woman Derek was talking too, with the deep, brooding, unaccented voice was … the fake one.

The older woman, held together by silicone, drunkenly clamped her arms around Sarah. It didn't escape Derek's notice that something flickered in Sarah's eyes when she did this. It was something self-loathing and uncomfortable. He guessed anyone would feel the same being pressed against two basketballs on the woman's chest.

"Everyone was wondering where you've gone." She broke the hug and placed an overly friendly arm around Sarah. "But don't worry, you're secret is safe with me." When she shushed after the statement Derek could smell the wine on her breath.

With a confused flash to her partner, the younger woman returned to the Hostess. "What's that?" She asked, clearly uncomfortable being touched.

The woman blew one of Sarah's wild curls out of the way. "That you didn't want to hang out with those old hags." She replied with boisterous sympathy.

Derek rolled his eyes at the sloshed middle age woman. "Yeah, that must be it." He chimed in with a sarcastic grunt. The drunken woman rounded on Derek, and after a moment found more reasons to dislike him from his posture and baring if her pictures were any proof of personal beliefs.

"Sadie, this is my partner, Derek Baum." Sarah introduced awkwardly.

Despite himself, Derek still politely offered his hand for a shake. Sadie didn't take it. She just sneered at it as if he was offering her an appetizer of goat eyeballs. "And what exactly do you do, Mr. Baum?" There was a snobby attitude covering a suddenly possessive nature toward Sarah.

The oldest Reese smirked privately. "Hm … dangerous question." He replied shortly.

There was a long pause before the woman let out a loud laugh. "Danger!" She turned to Sarah. "When we're young, we all live for danger, Mr. Baum." There was something strangely, albeit inelegantly, intimate in the way she looked at the younger woman. "But then we grow up, don't we?" She gave a clumsy flirtatious stroke to Sarah's hair. The woman obviously unaware of Sarah's private fury clenched in a fist that was about to strike.

"Now!" She butted Derek out of the conversation. "I just happened to have those papers you were asking about." Sweat was starting to form on the younger woman's face from some unknown stress deep within when suddenly her eyes grew wide.

Sarah's body all at once untensed. "The research?" She asked. The undercover woman suddenly looked like a fishermen baiting a hook.

"Ben said we're not supposed to show anyone yet, but I think I can let you into the ground floor … what do you say, Queen Victoria?" She offered with a bite of her lip. Sarah turned to Derek with a victorious smirk that matched the 'Fuck you' look the Berkley drop out gave the Soldier. The drunken woman didn't realize that she had fell victim to the number one rule in Derek Reese's life. Sarah Connor always got what she wanted.

There was incredulous annoyance in hazel eyes as Sarah motioned for the woman to lead on. Together the three of them traveled across the expansive living room occupied by a spatter of business men talking golf. Derek walked drag behind the two women, the drunken one spouting off to Sarah about the other women in their group, as if the raven haired warrioress would be a permanent fixture. It was the usual fair that the soldier would come to expect. Who went on a nine month vacation somewhere secluded, came back a little over weight and giving money to the producer for child support. Who was a multi-million dollar closet bisexual, and which of her husband's high profile clients liked the company of women better than their husband. They were the secrets that no one really cared about in real life, but were traded like currency amongst these people living in a gilded Camelot.

As they reached a narrow staircase made of stone tile steps, and railings of black iron, Derek hung back. He watched Sarah help the woman up the stairs. She wobbled, giggled, and finally drew an arm around Sarah as she bragged about the "Summer of Love" and all the good weed spots in town. Smirking and nodding, the raven haired mother of the future put an arm behind her and signaled with an open palm. She wanted him to wait five minutes, then go up and look around. It was astonishing and yet it wasn't how easily Sarah could gain someone's trust. There was a natural charisma to the woman that made her a confidante and friend to every person who met her. Derek thought if she were only smarter he could've mistaken her for an infiltrator.

He mounted the first step and leaned against the railing. Behind him he could over hear the conversation of two older gentlemen. Open white shirts, cabaña hats, feathered grown out locks of silver. They were the picture of a Southern California business man. But Derek wouldn't make the mistake of thinking they were idiots. Though they were talking golf, it was a pretty intense conversation. The soldier didn't understand a word of what they were saying, but he knew code when he heard it. They were talking business, and pretty serious business at that. If everyone knew what this was, than Sarah and himself weren't the only partners going after the money here.

There was a capped anxiety when he drew his phone from his jacket pocket. Two taps of the buttons and he held it to his ear. The moment the other line picked up, Derek put in the code while he made sure no one was watching. There was a long agitated sigh from the other line as the corresponding code beeped in Derek's ear.

"_What?" _

John Connor sounded edgy and in a bad mood. The boy's uncle rolled his eyes when he could think of counting on his fingers how many times he wasn't in one. It was like dealing with Kyle all over again. "I need you …"

"_Sorry Derek, but by and by my one true love still remains the sea." _

Somewhere in his mind he cursed Kyle's ashes. "Funny … I need you to run a dragnet for us." He rolled over John's smartass comment. "Bank Accounts, Social Security, Business associates …"

"_Property, clients, bra sizes … yeah I get it. Don't tell me … a lead busted?" _

Derek shook his head. "Like a GE Toaster." He sighed watching the perimeter. "Hedge fund scam and everyone here is looking to get the loot for themselves." He kept his voice down, but he could tell that the businessmen heard enough to vacate the area for more straight forward talk on the game plan. He needed to be a lot more careful dropping police slang in places like this.

"_Names?" _

"Sadie and Benjamin Horne."

"_Where's mom?" _

With a flick up the stairs, Derek shook his head again. "Trying to press a drunk desperate housewife for information. She seems to think that the cover story of some software theft from a tech company means Armageddon." He explained.

"_Sounds like corporate espionage." _

Derek's smirk was prideful hearing the teen's comment. Even self-taught, raised by Sarah Connor, a world class criminal, John still read the briefs and had a cop's intuition. Derek knew that somewhere their Pops would be proud that the Reese legacy didn't die with Derek and Kyle.

But thinking of Kyle brought out another question. "Hey … what's the story about Sarah's British accent?" He asked. From the other side of the phone the tacking of a keyboard stopped.

"_Huh? Did you say British accent?" _

John sounded shocked on the other end of the line. "She's been using it all night." He explained.

"_I haven't heard that since I was nine." _

There was something sadly nostalgic about a polished voice. What had started off as Reese asking about a cover ended with the soldier completely thrown off by realizing that it was genuinely authentic. "You're saying that it's real?" He asked.

"_It's real, though I thought she got rid of it years ago … too distinctive for the places where we lived at the time." _

"Sarah's not from America?" He might as well have been told that George Washington was French. On the other line, the typing began again.

"_She was born here, just wasn't raised here, and didn't come back from England till she went to college. And the rest as they say … is history." _

"How come she's never mentioned that before?"

"_Are you kidding? You could just about fill the Grand Canyon with the things mom doesn't tell us about her past. The only reason I know what I do is because I looked up her records at the public library when she was in Pescadero and even those __**were incomplete**__." _

It was an alien enigma to a mystery that haunted every person who ever heard the name uttered. Sarah Connor might have been the most implausible familiar stranger that Derek and the world had ever met. She neither existed before John Connor or after his ascension in the annuals of history. She was the brightest candle in the wind that existed only for several improbable flickers before being snuffed out to live on in legend. It was better this way he guessed, with no past and no future, Skynet would never get a fix on her. And yet it bothered Derek.

CRISH!

Just above the sound of hipster music echoing off the walls, there was a sharp piercing noise of fiberglass breaking upstairs. Derek immediately was sent into action, hand reaching for his Glock in his waistband. His hazel eyes were drawn up toward the shadows at the top of the stairs. He was confident that Sarah could take care of herself, but his gut told him that there was something wrong.

"_What was that?" _

Derek was calm. "Party … run the net, and we'll talk when we get back." He hung up on John. He looked back and thankfully for the time being no one was present that noticed anything. But that would soon change when the thumps on the ceiling began to pound on a rhythmic base that was bound to be noticed by someone.

He quickly dashed up the stairs to the upper rooms. The top floor was separated by two wings, with a bathroom at the top of the steps. Each wing had two bedrooms, a linin closet, and a bathroom. Derek was sure he'd never seen so many goddamn bathrooms in his life. He heard the thumping coming from the Master to his right.

Brandishing his Glock, Derek attacked the hallway procedurally, checking each corner in every room. A pink and white girl's bedroom was clear, except for a creepy gorilla doll sitting on top of the satin comforter. Grod was lucky he didn't get his stuffing inside out. The bathroom with the frosted glass shower and pharos bathtub was clear as well. Wealth was wasted on the rich.

Outside of the master bedroom was where he heard the commotion. It was a mattress that was springing up and down violently hammering the floor. For just a split second Derek's mind went somewhere dark, somewhere guilty, knowing that wasn't the way Sarah operated.

CRASH!

He threw the door open with a foot and checked each corner quickly, before moving in. The room looked like a picture in a furniture store advertisement, rustic and tropical with fake plants all over the corners. Africa or the idea of it really hit home with this Horne woman. The four poster bed with see through drapes was rocking back and forth violently, hemorrhaging throw pillows and stuffed animals. On top of the Silk comforter Sadie was pinned down, her arm twitching in helpless resistance. Mounted on top of her was Sarah. It was a confusing sight that was not remedied by the blood soaked knuckles that continued to pound mercilessly on the older woman. Blood arced into the air as Sarah Connor lifted one fist from a ruined face and rocketed another vicious blow with her other.

"Sarah!" Derek called in shock, lowering his gun. "Sarah!" He called louder, but the woman kept hitting and hitting. Finally he placed his gun on safety and rushed over to the 5'5 raven haired wrecking ball. Under tread were scattered papers of research that fluttered off the bed and to the floor.

"Sa-r-ah!" Derek grabbed her off the woman. At the sudden restraining, Sarah Connor made a frightening animalistic sound and twisted and snarled as he lifted her into the air off the bed and back on her feet. Before he had time to defend himself she grabbed his jacket and drove him across the room, slamming him into the wall next to the open doorway.

The woman was soaked in sweat head to toe. Her tight gray pants had a wet spot on their crotch where Sarah had urinated herself out of some great unknown fear that had gripped her. There were small bleeding cuts on the right side of her face where Sadie must have hit her with a lamp. But what Derek noticed was her eyes, those sharp emerald jewels were now wide and terrified, not a part of a conscious world. The woman ripped and pulled trying to get at him as a cornered animal might. The soldier drew his pistol again, turning it upside down, threatening quietly to hit her with the grip like a hammer. "Sarah! Sarah, it's me! Sarah!" He was seconds from clocking her unconscious when he finally looked her in the eye and she made the recognition. Like a fighter plane catching the cables on an aircraft carrier deck, Sarah's mind had landed in the here and now.

"Derek?" Her entire chest was heaving. "Derek?" She ran a clammy hand over his stubble and let it fall under jacket to cup his heart. He let out a relieved breath, lowering the gun to his side. "Derek?" She repeated and this time he nodded. She bit her lip and parroted the motion, a single tear falling down her cheek.

She looked vulnerable and frightened standing all alone in the middle of the room. Of all the things that she was, Sarah Connor showed in those few seconds of being completely exposed, that she was human. And that was why she came to him and crushed herself into his chest. He was cautious, but eventually he held her tightly as she collected herself in wheezed heaves. He'd like to think that he was any port in a storm, but he knew that somewhere deep inside she saw hazel eyes, Reese eyes, and she ran to them. He'd be damned before he turned his back on anyone who loved his family that much. As she burrowed in his chest, Derek watched the crumpled body of the woman lying motionless on her king sized bed as he ran his hand through sweat soaked tresses of long tussles of black curls.

Eventually it was Sarah who broke the hug, some steel returning to sharp eyes. He had gotten her back. He pushed off the wall and away from her lingering touch. The destination he stalked was where Sadie Horne lay motionless. Lifting her arm, he somehow knew there was no pulse. At fifty years old the woman had been beaten to death in a drunken mess. He ran a hand over his face, letting it rest on his chin. He squatted as if he was weighted with some unknown pressure that was crushing him. "Christ, Sarah …" he muttered to himself through hands now cupped over his nose and mouth.

"What is all of this?"

Derek was scrubbing his face when she asked the question. He paused and rounded on her from his crouched position. "What?" he asked. But Sarah Connor wasn't paying attention. She looked completely bewildered as she quietly, timidly studied their location in confusion.

"Where are we, Derek?" She turned her back to him.

"You don't know where we are?" He asked seriously, standing to full height.

Sarah shook her head. The woman for once wasn't defensive or guarded. She was simply lost, confused, and frightened. He had an idea of what happened when he saw the cuts on Sarah's pale face. Sadie Horne must have hit her hard enough with that lamp to send Sarah into a feral rage. But what he didn't know was what had happened that had caused the Housewife to hit Sarah with the lamp in the first place. He saw that whatever it was that started the fight, it was enough to scare the mother of all destiny into pissing herself. But when he saw the way Sarah was looking at him, he couldn't fault her for whatever had happened. After all the things he had done in his life, how could he judge her?

"It doesn't matter. We need to get out of here." He started moving toward the door.

For the first time Sarah had noticed the body lying on the bed. As Derek stopped next to her, he watched her looked down at her bloody knuckles. It was starting to become clear what she had done. If she was frightened before, she was terrified now.

"What have I done, Reese?"

By now Derek Reese had become accustom to those looks. From the first time that Kyle broke Mrs. Lake's window with a baseball, to Kansas bunker falling to the Machines on Wilshire, and John sitting in the cab of the truck as he was told the fate of Martin Bedell. Now it was Sarah, standing by the woman she had murdered. They had that same helpless expression. All of them were in over their head and had turned to Derek for help. That was because they all knew that Derek Reese was a hard ass that was as cold as an ice maker. They all hated and bemoaned his firm hand. But when it was all said and done they all turned to him because he could make the tough decisions no else could when it truly mattered. He had cursed being an older brother all his life till the moment the bombs dropped. Now it had become first nature to protect his family. When Sarah Connor looked to him in her vulnerability he didn't flinch away, and didn't hesitate. She was all he had, she and John. He'd protect her from anything in this world, even herself.

"Nothing anyone else wouldn't have done. You understand me?!" He cupped her cheek. Sarah was nearly despondent but she nodded all the same. "Anyone would've done the same thing, Sarah." There was a black reassurance that was as dark as it got when he saw that she had found comfort in the assurance of one who had killed before. There was enough shame and self-loathing to go around as he intertwined his fingers with hers.

Escaping into the night he reluctantly led her into the darkness and shadows of a City of Angels where in a town this bent, you could get away with anything …

Even murder.

* * *

><p>Benjamin Horne, born, Modesto California, 1957. He stayed out of anything but the Honor Roll till the late 70's. From Berkley he became an accountant for Apple in the early days, made most of his money word of mouth. Not surprising that the companies he worked for were audited twice, once before he got there, and then again once he left. The company usually was in hot water when they hired him and got out of it when he was done. They used to call him "Merlin" a true Tax wizard. Yeah, more like a wizard in skivvy ass robes. He got into the Hollywood rackets in the late 80's, had an eye for fly by nights. He'd work his magic till the clients' accounts dried up in the process of their fifteen minutes on the Hollywood fast lane and the Feds came knocking. Horne ended up collecting the back end of "Unpaid" invoices. Clean scam. Since then he's theft up words, latching on to much bigger sharks. Steady and more prestigious clients that in public feel that the one percent owe the poor, and yet they hire Benjamin Horne to find them loopholes while they go shoot their HBO shows across the world. They're sure bleeding something, but it ain't hearts.<p>

Sadie Jones, professional activist, Real Housewife of … somewhere expensive. She has a rap sheet of petty misdemeanors that she touts proudly to anyone that'll listen … that's a short list. She was born in Iowa in 1959. Parents joined the counter-culture movement, father moved to Canada when his number got called up during "Tet". He probably should've told his wife and daughter where he was going. Not that they'd have an address to be forwarded too. Sadie lived in the back of a van with her mother, an Aunt Sage and Uncle … Thornrose, original. They drove across America, preaching, protesting, and growing things they shouldn't. They had a merry time playing a game of 'how many people they can piss off in the country'. Aunt Sage dies when she comes down with a lethal dose of buck shot in the pelvis in Hargrove Mississippi in 1973. Killed by Doris Williamson, a seventy-six year old black grandmother of a twenty-seven year old simple boy named Ronald Williamson. Local kids were tormenting the poor guy. Sage ran them off, took him behind a local malt shop to treat his injuries and tried to pop his cherry. Love is free, until you're caught assaulting a woman's retarded grandson while on a drug high from abusing sedatives. Ugly business, Williamson was broken out of the small town jail and killed before being transported to trial up north. The mob of bed sheet wearers was never found, not surprising. They might never have loved the Space Cadets, but avenging Black on White murder was still a moral imperative in Hargrove. In 1976 LAPD responded to a call of a strange van parked outside a Burger King. Inside the back, the police discovered Thornrose, Sadie Jones, and her mother surrounded by a cloud of marijuana smoke pursuing a three way with the girl in the middle. They got Thornrose and Mrs. Jones on kiddy-rape beefs, and they've been very popular in their respective cell blocks in San Quen since. After two years of foster care and a year in Canada, Sadie Jones wised up that the hippy movement was over after being expelled from Berkley; a hard feet in itself. She ended up getting cozy with accountant Benjamin Horne at a drum circle at Steve Job's place. A life on the road had taught her being a bomb thrower doesn't mean she couldn't have the nice things in life. Horne and Jones were married in April of 1979 in San Francisco and the rest as they say … is history.

John Connor had been digging through these people's lives for most of the night. He'd found that Horne had several off shore accounts, and a shell company or two. It smelled pretty bad, but the problem was that John Connor was only sixteen, and these numbers were just as advertised … numbers. He was sure something illegal was going on and that there might be a way of getting their money back, but he wasn't an accountant. He might be able to drop by a university co-op, buy some books. Cameron could learn finance, but it would take time even for a cyborg to understand Horne's chicken scratch bullshit. And something told John that time was of the essence here.

What was obvious from what John could find and organize from the dragnet was that there was a name that kept popping up around large sums of cash from accounts that were in the red. The benefactor of these loans was Mansa Udaku. The name sounded familiar to John, so he checked the assets and found that he was a silent but big player in many activities in LA and Hollywood. For the last seven years the man hadn't missed once in investment. Every article called the man a Midas, every stock he touches turns to gold. There were some who thought he was psychic, since he seemed to be able to see the profit before there was even a market that existed.

In such a short time of being a Kingpin this guy bought up a hob knob club in Hollywood called "The Sea Court" right on the Boulevard. He owned a management firm on Wilshire for boxers, and a gym in Le Brea. There was also the talent office on Sunset for models, and bank rolling of several plastic surgeon offices around the city. You add the pawn shops in the diamond district and you got a man who has the means for a lot of things in this town. Managers finding fighters in South Central who'll take a fall for the boss, and when they wash up take thug jobs as experienced enforcers rather than limping back to Compton penniless. Girls who sign up for modeling jobs, that quickly turns to prostitution rings, with plastic surgeons that'll cut them to look like Fox or Alba for the special client that has money to buy the fantasy at The Sea Court. And of course the Pawn shops being fronts for high score and class fencing for thieves. The oldest sins perpetrated in the newest ways of this technological age.

If John was going to figure anything from this, Horne and his wife weren't looking to payback Udaku. The brain donors were trying to get out of town on the generous donations of a curious public enthralled by dystopian Disney advertising. It looks like the Horne's got in deep with the wrong guy, but a guy not made of metal or whose brain is run by server farms. The youth thought that in a just world this wouldn't be any of their business. But since his mother just helped donate to the Chinese fire drill, it just became a priority. Cameron was already buying ski masks in preparation for the bank heists in another Sarah Connor made disaster.

Three plasma screens crescented John. They blinked and streamed with spread sheets, LAPD files, and Los Angeles Examiner articles, each vying for his attention. The young man leaned back in a pleather office chair with a creak and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He didn't need this kind of stress right now and he was getting more and more frustrated as the screens flashed in the dark nursery that John and Cameron had turned into a mini office. With a squeak, the young man turned away from the desk before he smashed his screens.

It was a fool's folly to walk into this situation again. It was one thing when it was small timers like Sarkissian, But Mansa Udaku was a Kingpin. Even when they went after the Armenians it was for the Turk. His mom had now gotten them entangled in Hollywood politics and underworld dealings all because "possibly" there was a lead. He turned his eyes over toward the spot to his right. Last weekend Sarah Connor had been standing there ordering him to make the purchase for her and Derek's buy in. Behind her, his uncle was begging her not to do it … oh who was he kidding? He was begging John, the trigger man. Even from the doorway Cameron looked iffy about the whole thing. But John caved to Sarah's pressure all the same and here they were.

He felt like Derek lost respect for him that day, not that there was any to begin with, but if there was, it was on a train to Fresno. But what was worse was the unreadable look Cameron had given him as he left the room. Some people would say that it was insane to think that a machine would be able to express emotion, but even under her stoicism, John felt that even the girl he loved was disappointed in him. Since then, he'd been mad at everyone. He'd felt as if Derek didn't give him enough credit, that Cameron should trust him, and most egregious was how taken for granted he felt by the whole episode. He had gone out on a limb, bared Derek and Cameron's lower opinion of him, and all his mother did was act like a spoiled brat that was entitled to tell him what to do and think like he was her servant or worse.

He felt guilty to say that it was how he was feeling of late with his mother. The longer they spent together since she escaped Pescadero, the more he felt that he was living with some spoiled stranger. Someone who says she was there for all the important things, and asks the favors of someone who was important to him, but was only using those memories as means to an end to get what she wanted.

It was hard to believe now, but there was a time when his mother was different. Sarah Connor had always been tough, brooding, and decisive. But she was also thoughtful, gentle, and though it wasn't everyday there were times when she was even fun. When Derek called him and asked about her accent he had been swimming in memories. Smiles were easier, hugs more frequent, and love easier to find. He thought of a little boy with reading text books, sitting in her lap under motel sheets before bed as they went over it together. John learned the word, and Sarah learned the correct use of it. Flat became apartment, Lift became elevator, and no more tricking her over the phone that he had biscuits for breakfast when he had girl scout cookies. When she'd slip up mid-conversation he would reprimand her with a stern "American mamma" and she'd give him a dirty look, but eventually smile at her little professor. To him that was home, that voice, those nights spent together. If he'd known now what he didn't then, he'd let her keep that accent of hers. Because three years in an asylum for the criminally insane had returned to him a familiar stranger, who acted and talked different, if she talked to him at all without giving him orders or hell.

Both Derek and Cameron had grudged him for not standing up to his mother, and maybe he kicked himself for not doing so either. But since Pescadero, John had been waiting for his mother to somehow return from that place. He'd give her slack, and then rope, slack, and then rope, hoping that she'd pull herself out. But all she seemed to do was hang them with it. He'd placed all his hope and trust in the woman, because he always had. Remembering all the times, good and bad, that he and his mom had gone through together, Sarah had earned his trust out of the necessity of being all he ever had. But with each failure, one after another, and the darkness within him after the year he'd had, John began to wonder with a deep sadness if this was what growing up felt like, wanting back things that would never come. It was the sober realization that his mother was no longer who he remembered her being. The concept filled him with a lonesomeness that hit him right to the bottom of his heart. Because it meant that he had no home now. That John Connor was ready to take back his trust from a woman who had meant so much to him all his life.

The walls seemed so close in the nursery all the sudden, sitting in the dark, watching the shadows on the windowless room dance with each flicker of the plasma screens. He turned in his chair and transferred files to the flash drive and printed the useful documents for briefs. When he was done, he encrypted the systems, and erased his digital footprints. Then, he got out of there before he suffocated.

Out in the hall he took a deep breath and felt the weight of all his private musings and angst pull him to the boards. There was nothing he wouldn't do for some sort of reassurance or comfort. But it wouldn't come while the mix of music, snickers, and instruction echoed to the upper level. He had nearly forgotten about what was going on downstairs. He wished he could continue his ignorance as he moved to his room. But he stopped himself and looked down at the file in hand. It was suspicious enough that he had locked himself in the nursery, but if he didn't come down to at least make an appearance it wouldn't go unnoticed. Tapping the file against his head, John gave a long sigh and moved down the stairs. He paused between the top and the first landing to watch what was going on.

Then he wished he hadn't.

Standing behind the couch, manning the stereo, was their neighbor Kacy. The pretty blond in a linin halter top and worn jeans was swaying her hips, as if demonstrating what should be happening. "No, baby, he leads, not you … don't look at me like that, I don't make the rules." She chuckled. As the slow romantic music flowed with an air of melancholy, John watched a short boy with a black button down and skater jeans sway awkwardly, his hands on slim hips. Accompanying the Hispanic boy was a slender girl, straight backed, and elegant looking. The beauty's long chocolate hair was curled into twisty ringlets as part of a new look she was trying out. She wore a small black shirt that bared her sleek midriff and a blue jean skirt.

John's face fell and eyes lightened as he watched Cameron's golden eyes lock with Morris's muddy brown as they box stepped across the living room rug. He'd never been more in love in that moment with someone that felt a thousand miles away when she was only a dozen paces from him. It was something in the music, the flourish of her hair in the lamplight as she sleekly moved across the carpet. He watched her eyes focused with a pleasant expression. John's fell on her slender arms wrapped around the back of Morris's neck and the quiet ghosted smirk of enjoyment that came whenever she danced.

It was part of Kacy's prom boot camp. Since she had heard of John and Riley's breakup, she had unloaded her vicarious aspirations for the perfect night all on Morris and Cameron. She was a woman that was bent on making Morris and Cameron a thing. Being of the same generation as Kacy, just eight years removed, John had seen those movies as well. The Disney Saturday night specials were the geeky, goofy, weirdo gets the beautiful girl and they have a prince and princess waltz at mid-court with all envious eyes on them. He'd tell the woman to shove off, that Cameron was spoken for. But he held his tongue, knowing even a slip up could shake this family to its foundation. So John and Cameron's secret relationship would have to take a back seat to outside medaling for the sake of the façade of normalcy in a home that was far from it.

Cameron was the first to break eye contact and find him watching. He could only imagine what his face must have looked like to see her and Morris making eyes, because Cameron almost physically winced under his almost inhuman gaze of wrath. From there it was all a snowballing avalanche. The smaller kid looked up from his nervous but love struck gaze to find John watching them. In the way he unhanded Cameron one might have thought he had his hand on a greasy sizzling grill. An end table scrapped loudly on the wooden floor when Morris backed up on it. Finally Kacy looked up and as aloof as ever only smirked.

"Ease up, kiddo, I'm chaperoning here." She chuckled. "No one's honor is in jeopardy." She assured him.

John's glared. "Those two statements conflict with each other." He snarked and took a deep breath before Morris hit his knees and begged for mercy.

The woman only smirked bitterly at the whip in his wit watching John descend the stairs. "Oh hardy har, emo kid." She swatted his arm as he passed.

They watched the young man lay the Horne case file on a corner table next to a pile of intel closed by rubber bands. With a positive step forward, Cameron addressed him. "Kacy has been teaching us how to dance." She supplied. The atmosphere was one of John catching her in another's bed.

But the young man didn't turn to face her. "Is that what she's calling it?" He jabbed rhetorically as he dug out another rubber band from a drawer. The playful lilts in his hard voice made Morris stop sweating and his heart stabilize in his narrow chest.

"It's a working progress." He chuckled. "All I know how to do is mosh and I don't think Cameron would last long in "the pit" if you know what I'm saying." He hoped to share a moment with the girl, but the cyborg was focused intently on John's back as he squared away briefs.

"You'd be surprised." He grinned to himself. An image in his mind conjured dozens of metal heads lying in the mud groaning while Cameron stands alone watching the thrash band like they were curious stick insects.

The blond crossed her arms looking at John suspiciously. "Hey if you and Riley just would've stayed the course, I'd be teaching you how to bust a move too." She looked perpetually annoyed with the boy who had gone fifty shades of dark since the time he stole cable for her.

"I wouldn't need it." He shot back. The snap of the rubber band on folder put a poignant period on his point. He tried not to look at Cameron as he moved to the kitchen to get something fruity to drink.

"Oh, yeah, than why don't you show us, Ricky Martin?"

John stopped and did what he told himself he wouldn't. His hard emerald eyes flew straight to Cameron standing and watching him from behind. He never thought how much he wanted it, wanted her, till that moment. The same bullshit Disney channel movies on some static TV in a crappy motel room came flashing to him. He was the same lonely boy perpetually waiting for his mom to come home. Mid-court, the shiny princess dress, all the jealous jocks watching. It was the closest and first best understanding of love that John Connor ever had. If there ever was a wish he could ask for, it was to have that moment for himself with the girl loved. There would be no wedding, no formals for the two of them. It could be years and years of watching from the shadows, stealing minutes and seconds behind people's backs. All he wanted was just one perfect moment on one perfect night to hold her in his arms and dance to some recycled 80's track. Just to know what it was like, to know those feelings he got at the end of those movies were real and that they were for him as much as everyone else his age.

He bowed his head under golden curious eyes and turned to Kacy who had her hands on hips expectantly. "I don't dance." He said seriously with a broodingly hard tone. Turning away from Morris and Cameron, John began walking away.

"How come?!" She called after him, annoyed at the mysterious tough guy act.

He shrugged as he dropped the case file on the dining room table. "Tried it once, didn't like it." He said with a stiff causal tone disappearing into the kitchen.

When the swing door closed he let out a large sigh and stumbled to the island. Bracing himself against it, he panted. His face stung as adrenaline rushed through his veins like lines of marching soldier ants with needle legs. It was becoming harder day after day to control himself. Emotions ran deep within John Connor, and lately all of them were bordered by a blackness that was always leading back to anger. He had tried hard to not let it control him, but his resentment of everything and everyone in his life was only getting worse now that he had started this relationship with Cameron. The more he spent time away from her, the more he was forced to keep his distance, the more the rage built inside him. It was getting harder and harder to hide.

This shadow of greed shaded his souls some nights. It made him feel crazy, guilty, and self-conscious to feel the things he felt. John Connor had never been in love before, nor had he ever had a girlfriend. He was making all of this up as he went. But he was scared when he was like this. To feel this way, so angry just to see someone touch her. He knew this wasn't love or he hoped this wasn't. On his worst nights he counted the wrongs and double standards placed on him and spat venom on all the people he loved for it. The truth was that in that moment when he came down the stairs he didn't just want to kill his friend and Kacy, he hated them for being here, and he hated them for depriving him of Cameron. He knew it wasn't right to feel this way. It felt like he had some sort of infection on a wound that he thought was healing but was starting to turn under the stitches.

Thoughts turned toward his mother and that night in July several years ago. She wasn't going to just kill Miles Dyson, she was going to blow him away. A study in hyperbole notwithstanding, that night Sarah Connor wasn't out to just kill the creator of Skynet, she was going to eviscerate him and his family. He'd seen the hate in her, the darkness that she embraced like a lover. She let it have control over her till the moment she couldn't pull the trigger. Since then, he had watched her fight it, reclaim parts of herself inch by inch. But he could still see it most nights. The anger, the deep soul killing hatred in the way she looked at everyone behind her emerald rapier eyes. Yet, it could never dominate her, because Sarah never knew what it was like to take a life. She had come so close and yet it never happened. Sarah hadn't killed while under the influence.

But John had.

He had touched that same darkness and let it inside him. But unlike his mom, who was still pure of heart, even with all the things done to her that she lived with and never told a soul. John Connor murdered the beast he was after. Not only did he murder it, he stuck it down with a savage hatred and spat on its bloody corpse when he killed it. He was slowly learning that there was no going back after that. His enemy wasn't human, an albino ape, and yet he had ended another life. He killed Sarkissian to protect the woman he loved, and the ape to protect his soul mate. How easier will the next one be? How long before he justifies another one? He looked at these feelings as if it was another entity, some other facet of emotion that wasn't him. But the most frightening concept to him in his most private moments of self-reflection was to think, to know, that this was who he was all along. In the darkest moments, in the most private places of his mind, John Connor was afraid of what he had become in the justification of protecting the women he loved and in turn what he was capable of when faced with the protection of all humanity.

Suddenly the swing door opened and Morris came inside. He looked flustered and out of sorts as he grabbed his denim jacket off the counter under the phone. So sudden was his overwhelmed state that he was startled to find John standing in the mostly dark kitchen.

"John! Oh man, you could've killed me!' He chuckled hurriedly.

"What's going on?" John asked seriously.

Morris slipped on his jacket. "My, ugh, grandma is in the hospital." He explained.

A shower of self-loathing and guilt wetted John at the way he had acted earlier. "Hey, sorry, is she alright?" He walked over to the boy.

Morris gave a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, I mean, I guess … I don't know why they called me. I didn't know I was a contact … but anyway she twisted her hip or something during bingo." He explained as they both exited the kitchen. "It's wrestling night, I didn't even know she played bingo … I mean if she was going to lie you'd think it would be about watching wrestling instead of playing Bingo at the Lincoln Heights Rec?" he complained.

A knowing look came over John's face as he escorted the punk rock fan to where Kacy was gathering her things. She slipped on black leather waist jacket and turned to John. "Hey, Morris's grandma got into a bingo accident." She explained while pushing up her sleeves.

There was a private look of amusement that he hid well. "So I've heard." He placed a consolatory hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Yeah, well, I'm going to drive him to the hospital over there … since Cameron picked him up." She explained.

John walked with them to the front door and opened it for them. Morris paused as Kacy strode down the tile steps to the gravel drive way. "Hey can you tell Cameron when she gets out of the bathroom that I'm sorry to run out on her?" There was a painful sincerity to his comments that John didn't have the heart to mock. So he only placed his hand on his shoulder again and gave a nod of approval.

"Later, dude." The two boys clasped hands with a pop, and bumped opposite shoulders.

When the boy got down the first landing, John closed the door slowly. He let silence fill the home again as Kacy pulled away. When they were gone he stood in the doorway and couldn't hide the shit eating grin on his face as he stared at the door for a moment longer.

"Bingo accident?" He asked to the figure standing at the middle of the stairs.

When he turned Cameron seemed expressionless. She looked down at her boots before she looked to John. "It seemed harmless, but effective." She looked back toward him genuinely. He placed his hands in his pockets as he walked toward the stairs as the cyborg descended to meet him. When they reached each other he stood at the bottom, while she was on the second step from the last.

"Bingo accident?" He repeated with a bigger smile of amusement, trying the excuse like a new shirt in a dressing room.

Cameron frowned. "I did not want to cause him undo stress. The "nurse" simply explained to him that his grandmother won a gift certificate to a steak house, was over jubilant, and pulled something." She explained. John chuckled despite himself as he rubbed the back of his neck tiredly.

"It got him out of the house, did it not?" She pointed out.

He nodded. "Let's just hope they don't think about it too much." He looked up at her.

There was a long silence as they exchanged quiet looks. Then slowly John took a step forward and swallowed up his cyborg protector in his arms. He buried his face in her chest as he lifted her off the stairs giving her the customary spin before setting her down. Wrapping her arms around his neck they traded a passionate kiss like old lovers who had spent so many wasted lifetimes away from one another.

When they broke apart it was with a smack of moist cherry lip balm. He looked into her golden eyes and let her wash over him before burying his nose into her cheek and nuzzled it. Gently Cameron ran her hand through the back of his hair leaning into him.

"When I saw you on the stairs, I knew that they had over stayed their welcome." She said in a docile voice in his ear as John kissed the mole over her eyebrow.

Rigidness fell over him suddenly and slowly he left a peck on her eyebrow. Cameron felt it just by the contact of his skin on hers as he broke apart from her. There was a sudden guilt that flashed on the young man's handsome but brooding features as he faced his love.

"Did I say something wrong?" She asked. John didn't meet her gaze as he rubbed the cool skin on her exposed waist.

"No …" He shook his head and walked away.

Cameron seemed bothered by the action. "Was it the wrong thing to do?" She asked. It killed John how innocent she seemed and how willing she was to fault herself for his issues. All of it was making him feel worse as he gripped the love seat and stared at the book shelf.

"It's not you …" He sighed and leaned into the couch. He turned to check on her and she watched him expectantly. "Look …" he shook his head. "When I came down the stairs …" he started.

"You were upset." She finished for him. "Because I was with Morris." She confirmed.

He wanted to deny it, fill himself up with this noble idea that he wasn't some jealous jackass that was right on par with every guy his age. But he couldn't. "Yeah …" He nodded.

"I understand, that's why I sent him and Kacy away." She nodded.

It made John feel worse. "I know … but you shouldn't have. Not on my account." She looked suddenly very confused. He sighed again. "I saw your face, I know you enjoy dancing … you were enjoying yourself." He explained.

"Yes, it is always pleasurable."

John nodded. "Exactly, so you shouldn't have to stop it just because I didn't feel comfortable with you and Morris … dancing together. If you were enjoying yourself you shouldn't have to take me into account." He felt suddenly so guilty for everything. He was guilty for this darkness, guilty for Morris's unneeded stress, and guilty for wasting Kacy's gas money.

"But that's my job." Cameron was confused. "I was built solely to take you into account, always." She continued.

"But if you're enjoying yourself …"

"It is irrelevant what I feel or experience if it hurts you, John. I trust you feel the same for me."

"Of course!"

Cameron tilted her head. "Then I don't understand why we're having this conversation." She tightened her cheek.

A glare was leveled at her as John crossed his arms. "That's … not the … point." He gave a long sigh of frustration. Even in his own damn life John didn't have the privilege of beating the hell out of himself without someone doing it for him over something completely different. What was the point of quibbling over never having a wedding for themselves when he felt like they'd been married for thirty years already.

There was a very Sarah Connor look to her son as he glanced over at Cameron with a private look of grudging affection under a scowl. Eventually he pushed off the back of the couch and walked to the stereo system. Interested in what he was doing Cameron walked over to watch.

"What are you doing?" She asked as he shuffled through the disks, reading the back of the cases that belonged to the previous owner of the home. When he saw a track on one of the CDs he suddenly smiled with a sad nostalgic lilt. He removed the disk from its case and opened the turntable.

"Making it up to you." He replied as he placed the disk and pushed the tray back inside.

"Making what up to me?" She watched him fiddle with the stereo for a moment longer.

John turned toward her. "You were enjoying dancing, so why let the good times stop when you still have a partner?" He took her hand.

"I thought you didn't dance?" She asked in confusion.

Suddenly a bombastic opening of a big band number from the 40's came over the speakers. "I make special exceptions." He smirked gently. With a lift of her arm and a twirl, he spun her into his embrace.

The two began to sway together to the clarinets that evened out and slowed the old song. It was as if the two had done it a hundred times over a thousand timelines as they moved across the floor. Anticipation of the steps was all muscle memory ingrained in the DNA and circuitry of the two lovers. Their chemistry guided by some unseen energy that seemed to have always existed that had drawn them to one another, before they even knew each other's names or very existence.

"_Why do robins sing in December,  
>Long before the springtime is due?<br>And even though it's snowing,  
>Violets are growing,<br>I know why and so do you."_

Cameron watched with a surprised fascination when John began to serenade her, keeping up perfectly with the female standard singer on the CD. His hard green eyes lightened as they cut a path to the center of the living room. In Cameron's arms the darkness that had so consumed John Connor's fears and future seemed to disappear as if she alone was some ironic ethereal creature that pulled him into god's light from the shadows he had lingered in for so long. Even in the light that shined on the suddenly so tired figure with the youthful face there was a reprieve of happiness the closer he held her.

"_Why do breezes sigh ev'ry evening,  
>Whispering your name as they do?<br>And why have I the feeling  
>Stars are on my ceiling?<br>I know why and so do you."_

John's voice was gravely and yet it was so balanced that it made Cameron along with all those that had ever heard him wonder if destiny had chosen the wrong path for the young man. She kept step with him as they remained stationary for the rest of the song, captured in one another's eyes, seeking shelter from the outside in the world that they created for one another where there was no one but John and Cameron. No tomorrow, no yesterday, just as the two of them in this moment, in these arms.

"How do you know this song?" Cameron asked.

There was a strange nostalgia that seemed attached to whatever memory played through John's brain. He bit his lip and shrugged. "When I was little, I lived several months in this ramshackle room at "The Victory Motel" this sort of 40's hold over. Mom was with these survivalist nut jobs, and she wanted me close, and it was the only place close enough but "Not too close" in mom logic. Anyway, so I lived next door to this guy, and every day around five or six just as I was doing my English homework, he'd play this song on his record player." John shook his head at the memory. "And I'd get so sick of it … and finally I went over to tell him to turn his bullshit off. So I knock on the door and this old man, World War II vet, opens the door and I feel like a jackass." Cameron gave him a smirk when she saw the humbled smile on the youth's face as he spoke. "So he invites me in, apologizes, and explains to me over a Coke why he plays it every day at the same time at a particular volume." He nodded.

"Why?" Cameron seemed more fascinated than any one person might at the mundane story.

There was a glassy look in John's eyes as he focused on Cameron absently. "Well …" He cleared his throat. "During the war, he had hit it off with this British nurse in New Guinea. He had told her all about Los Angeles, and that there was this great motel on the outskirts of these beautiful hills. After a night of dancing and drinking she asked him for the address, what time he'd get there, and which room he'd be staying at when all of it was over? He told her, but just before the first kiss the Japanese surprise air raided the base and they got separated. He never saw her again after that. So after V-J Day he drove over to this motel and used his pension to buy out the room. So every day since, at the time he promised to be there, he played this song, hoping that if she ever comes around she hears the first song they danced to and know where he is." He cleared his throat and shook his head with just a sorrowful lilt in his smirk.

Cameron watched John for a long a moment. "What happened after that?" She asked.

"I sat outside with him every day. When you're a kid there's more room for fairytale … maybe today would be the day, you know?" He nodded in some private sorrow that still stung freshly.

The cyborg tilted her head. "Did she ever show up?" She asked.

There was a hard cynical feeling that overcame him. But the longer he held his protector, feeling her so close to him. He began counting all the impossibilities and inconsistencies that had to have happened in time and space to make this very moment a reality. Then, he only smiled again. "Here's hoping, Angel." John reached up and touched her cheek, rubbing his thumb over the bone with a new sense of reverence.

There was a pensive look on the girls face as they quietly absorbed the music as John was cast a million miles away and yet every thought brought her closer. Finally the girl looked up again and captured his attention.

"When you're eighty-three, like that man in your story … will you still dance with me?" She asked without hesitation. There was a pure angelic innocence to her voice, never she flinching in the weight of the question she asked.

You could almost audibly hear the sound of John Connor's heart break as he looked so consumed by a love so deep that he felt the cyborg girl was hardly real. A smile directed by intense eyes of a deep attachment wrapped around her. He stammered a moment, emotion heavy on his vocal cords. He cleared his throat and ran a hand through her hair.

"At eighty-three I'd probably want too …" He winced. "But the likelihood of being able too is highly doubtful." He shrugged.

Intrigued by the issue, she thought for a moment before returning to him. "I could carry you." She offered.

John smiled and nodded slowly not looking anywhere else. "Then nothing would've changed." He chuckled. Instead of answering the cyborg laid her head against his broadening chest. Watching her, John leaned down and kissed his protector's forehead, before he closed his eyes and laid his head on top of hers. Together they swayed to the old song in the middle of their living room. It never dawned on John Connor; it was simply just intuition, that he was never homeless …

He just moved.

* * *

><p><span><strong>Acknowledgements<strong>

"_I know why (And So Do You)" – Glenn Miller & His Orchestra_


End file.
